


Kick Off Your Sunday Blues

by pyrchance



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - Footloose Fusion, Alternate Universe - High School, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gaslighting, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:26:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrchance/pseuds/pyrchance
Summary: “They can’t just ban music,” Patrick hisses.“And dancing,” Joe says, “and concerts and record stores.”"They banned record stores!”-It's Footloose, y'all.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 68
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tags will be updated as we go. Please check 'em.

Hot. Oppressively, cruelly, unjustly hot. That is the weather.

Patrick’s limp body forms a pathetic pool on the church pew, soggy and disgusting beneath his collared shirt. He’s ripe. He’s practically drowning in his own sweat and the stench of himself has crawled into his skull to pound against his eyes. It’s as though the sun has turned into Sauron and he is the poor, hairy creature stuck in its sight.

There’s a single fan at the front of the congregation, stirring the musty air. The windows are all closed. The blinds drawn. The preacher’s voice stretches up towards the heavens but somehow misses Patrick sitting in a middle row. Beside him, his mom sits attentively beside her sister, his Aunt Sally; both of them straight backed and clasping hands like they’re riveted. Patrick doesn’t know how they can stand it. He shifts, and he swears his ass must leave a butt imprint on the wood. Hell cannot be hotter than this place.

Finally, the preacher gives them the motion to stand. Patrick is on his feet and rocketing for the exit before he registers no one else has moved from the pews. What is happening is someone has sat down at the ancient upright piano near the front and is henpecking out a hymn.

The congregation warbles along, and it’s weird—fucking weird—that at least half the people Patrick sees aren’t even trying to sing, just whispering the words under their breath. He winces. His ears _really_ don’t like it.

“Hey, psst—new guy.”

There’s a tap on Patrick’s shoulder. He turns to find a kid about his age with long, flat bangs and wide brown eyes holding out a bible.

“Just take mine,” he instructs, speaking in a conspirator’s whisper. “I know ‘em all.”

Patrick has never felt such an immediate rush of relief. He smiles back in gratitude. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. His family was never a church family before. They never even bothered at Christmas.

The guy leans forward when Patrick reaches for the bible, pressing it into Patrick’s palms while his mouth curls like he knows a secret.

“What’s your name, new kid?”

Patrick glances around them. He doesn’t know much about going to church, but he’s gathered enough to know they’re supposed to be quiet. Around them, however, the parishioners seem content to mumble-sing their way through whatever dull hymn this is. Patrick can barely make out a melody to it, despite the plucky piano. No one is paying the two of them any mind.

He licks the sweat off his lips and says, “Patrick.”

“Another saint. Just what this town needs.” The guy grins wider. Patrick is beginning to suspect it’s not much of an actual smile, but a leer. The longer he holds it, the more wicked his face appears. The guy leans forward again, this time to tap the bible held between them. “Well, Saint Patrick, we’re on page 384.”

Patrick can’t tell if he’s being messed with. It raises his hackles. “Who’re you?”

The demand comes out bit louder than he means to. Someone shushes him. His mother looks startled out of the revere she seems to have been in, blinking down at Patrick with the same slightly-dazed expression she’s been wearing since the divorce, like she’s not quite sure who she’s seeing. His aunt just glares.

A wave of heat rolls under Patrick’s skin. He knows his face must be red. He straightens quickly, facing front like a good boy, and trying to ignore the way his sweaty back must look from behind.

There’s a second tap on his shoulder. Patrick shakes his head, hoping the guy will take the hint. He opens the bible to the appropriate page, squinting down at the tiny font.

There’s a shift behind him. Then a voice whispers far too close to his ear: “I’m Saint Peter. Call me Pete.”

*

Patrick spots Pete again after the service, tumbling out of the church with a group of kids all around their age. His mom and aunt have been accosted by the preacher, however, and instead of Patrick getting a chance to meet more of his peers, he gets to stand under the hot sun and listen as the preacher tells his mother just how sorry he is ‘to hear about the unfortunate circumstances’ of their coming here.

His mother seems charmed. Aunt Sally practically swoons. Patrick kicks at the yellow grass and wonders when people are going to stop acting like his dad is dead instead of just a deadbeat.

When they finally make it home, the last dregs of Patrick’s day is spent unpacking his two boxes of things into the basement room his aunt has lent him. He gets a pull-out couch as a bed, an old folding table as a desk, but as much privacy as he likes away from the main floor of the house. It’s just his aunt and mom up there, since his uncle passed a few years ago, but something in the way his aunt stares makes Patrick feel like a whole gaggle of housewives are watching. He leans his guitar case against a wall, then spends most of his night carefully organizing his tape collection into neat stacks on the table, knowing his clothes will end up all wrinkly in the box but not caring enough to unpack them.

In the morning, he kisses his mother on the cheek as she sits listlessly at the kitchen table and makes his way to school. Back in Chicago, there were always buses and trains around. Here in the middle of nowhere, he hikes up his backpack and hoofs it.

By the time he makes it to the front office, he’s come to terms with the fact he will always be slightly sweaty in this place. Patrick just isn’t built for the outdoors or walking. The only saving grace is his Walkman to make the trek go faster.

He walks into the halls of Midtown High with _The Bangles_ in his ears, bobbing and weaving with his head down. The secretary gives him a supremely unimpressed look to go with his schedule, then directs him down to the library. It’s just as he’s gathering up his new books that he bumps into his new best friend.

“Hey! Seriously, man?”

Patrick, books plummeting from his arms much like his stomach, looks up at the bushy haired guy he just ran into. The backpack in the boy’s hands is currently spewing its guts on top of Patrick’s new books on the floor. His face is deeply annoyed.

“Shit.” Patrick immediately drops down to collect everything. “Sorry. I am the worst kind of spacey in the morning. I didn’t hear you.”

The boy’s face has a flat sort of demeanor and lazy, sardonic eyes. He snorts, but gets down on his knees beside Patrick to sort through their things. He pauses when he picks up Patrick’s headphones, knocked from his head in the crash.

“You’re into music?”

“I mean yeah.” Patrick shovels his books into his backpack, which he should have just done the first time, glancing at the other boy. “Who isn’t?”

He’s never really gotten that question—who _doesn’t_ like music?—but the boy is looking at Patrick like he just said something highly suspect. They both stand. The boy tracks Patrick’s hands as he takes back his headphones, settling them around his neck.

“You’re new, right?” the boy asks. “Do you have any more tapes?”

“Yes?” Again, with the obvious questions. Patrick wonders if it’s a small town thing. “I mean, I’ve got some. Not as many as I’d like. I have records too. Uh, are _you_ into music?”

It feels even stupider coming out of his own mouth, but the boy nods once, seriously. He holds out his hand. “I’m Joe.”

“Patrick.”

Joe jerks his chin at Patrick’s headphones, looking up and down the hallway. “You should put those away before a teacher sees you. Music isn’t allowed at school.”

“What?” Patrick blinks at Joe, aghast. “Please tell me you’re joking.”At his last school, it wasn’t uncommon forkids to carry boomboxes around on their shoulders. So long as they didn’t play it in the classrooms, no one seemed to care. Patrick’s sanity _depended_ on his headphones. He hadn’t gone a day in high school without them.

Joe shakes his head. “They don’t give them back until you turn eighteen either. It’s part of the town ordinance.”

Patrick frowns. He’s never heard of such a thing. “What town ordinance?”

“Right, you wouldn’t know,” Joe sighs. He rubs a hand down his face, the grumpy, sleepy expression on his face fading slightly.“Come on. I’ll walk you to class. Something tells me you’re not going to take this well.”

Joe is right. Patrick does not take it well.

*

“They can’t just _ban_ music,” Patrick hisses. He and Joe are standing in line in the cafeteria for lunch. The school is tiny enough that his and Joe’s schedules have already overlapped twice. Patrick can’t believe he’s already made a friend and a mortal enemy all on his first day.

“And dancing,” Joe adds, sliding his plastic tray along the rails, “and concerts and record stores.”

Patrick swells. “ _They_ _banned record stores!”_

“Well, more like neutered them,” Joe concedes, scratching at his face as a lunch lady ladles a heap of soggy green beans onto his tray. “They’re only allowed to sell non-profane stuff to minors. Basically you have to have your mommy walk in for permission to buy anything that isn’t, like, piano music or two hundred years old. Most of the town is pretty brainwashed into it.”

“Let me guess,” stews Patrick, getting the same heaping of greens, “it’s all determined by those same city council pricks.”

“And Pastor Wentz,” Joe nods. “My rabbi is sort of pissed the guy is so deep into city politics. Apparently, Wentz used to be a lawyer or something before he was ordained.”

Pastor Wentz. Even the name makes Patrick want to spit. He can’t believe he actually shook the guy’s hand on Sunday.

“Come on,” says Joe tugging on his arm. Patrick realizes he’s been holding up the line as Joe pulls him out of the crush. “We sit over here.”

Joe shepherds Patrick through a sea of letterman jackets and soft-pastels to a far table. It’s crowded mostly with boys in black and denim, though there is one girl among them. They’re noticeably louder than all the other tables around them; one voice Patrick recognizes rises up above the others.

“Saint Patrick!” Pete cries, popping to his feet. His smile is just as canary-satisfied as Patrick remembers, though he seems a lot more touchy-feely than he had in the church as he comes up and slings an arm around Patrick’s neck.

Patrick stiffens uncomfortably under the touch. “Uh, hey, Pete.”

Joe looks at them with raised brows, sliding his tray next to a severe looking kid with a bright red beard. “You two have met?”

“Kind of—”

“I rescued him from my father!” Pete pronounces, shaking Patrick around the neck.

Patrick quickly pushes Pete off, ears bleeding. “What? No, you didn—”

“He was sweating so much, I just knew he was a fellow sinner,” Pete rolls on. He speaks like a ringmaster, addressing the whole table with every line in his smile sharpened to perfection. “I have never seen a dude sweat so much. I swear, it looked like he was going to go up in flames. I thought my father was going to call for an exorcism right there.”

Every single eye at the table lands on Patrick. He tightens his grip on his tray, smile freezing. To his horror, he feels a drop of sweat peel down his back.

“You’re such an asshole, Pete,” someone mutters sharply. It’s the one girl at the table, a brunette wearing a smear of red lipstick and a sour expression. “Just sit down, new kid. Pete isn’t house trained.”

“Aw, Bebe,” whines Pete, slouching to the girl’s side. “You’re so mean to me.”

The girl doesn’t even look at him, just says, “Down boy.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Patrick” adds the red-head in a voice far lighter than his outward demeanor. “I’m Andy. Where did you move from?”

“Uh, Chicago.” Patrick hesitantly sets his tray down and climbs onto the bench. The others shift over for him. Patrick counts five in total: Joe, Pete, Andy, the girl Bebe, and a guy so tall he dwarfs the rest of the table. Pete drapes himself over the girl as he sits back down, pouting at Patrick with his chin hooked on her shoulder, like her scolding him was Patrick’s fault.

“Hey, that’s my cool backstory,” Pete complains, exaggerating his frown as he reaches for a fry over Bebe’s shoulder.

Patrick reluctantly looks over at him. He still doesn’t get what Pete’s deal is. “You’re from Chicago?”

“Wilmette,” announces Pete proudly. Patrick looks down at Pete’s holey jeans and ripped-sleeve tank and he can’t help it—he snorts. Pete straightens up. “What’s funny?”

“Sorry, sorry—” Patrick hides his smile behind a hand. “That’s just surprising. No offense, but you don’t really, uh, look the part.”

The smile on Pete’s face slowly slides off. “Come again?”

“I just mean—” Patrick is beginning to understand that he might have stepped in it, “I mean, come on. I’ve seen the houses over there. They’re practically all mansions.”

“Uh huh—” Pete’s face loses all hint of that spark of playfulness, growing tight as he stares at Patrick. He leans over the table. “—and?”

Patrick’s apparently really, really stepped in it. He casts his eyes around the table. The others are definitely listening, watching the scene with all the interest of rubberneckers at a freeway crash. Andy’s wearing an expression similar to Pete’s—that is, he’s frowning at Patrick. The only respite is Joe, who watches the panic bloom on Patrick’s face and bails him out.

“And you look like you robbed a train hopper for your shoes,” Joe finishes for him, lazily tossing a french fry Pete’s way. Pete squawks, grabbing a fistful of Bebe’s fries an throwing them back, earning a big, “Hey!” from Bebe and a sock in the arm. Just like that the tension breaks. Patrick wilts as the attention is drawn off of him, until he looks up and sees Andy still staring at him.

“I’m not sure what you meant by all that,” Andy says placidly, speaking quietly enough the rest of the table continues on with the impromptu food fight, “but small words have a big impact in a small town.”

Thoroughly chided, though Patrick’s not even quite sure what _for_ , he slumps in his seat. “Right. Sorry. That came out all wrong.”

“Okay,” accepts Andy easily. Apparently done with what he had to say, he goes back to his meal, eating with a monk-like focus. His tray, Patrick notices, is basically one big green bean salad.

Joe and Pete’s food spat finally ends once Pete is banished to get Bebe more fries. Patrick feels his shoulders relax once the other boy gets up from the table. He shoots Joe a thankful look and gets a shrug in response. Meanwhile, the tall kid at the end of the table leans across to gather up Patrick’s attention.

“So, Chicago, how’re you liking little old Midtown?”

“Oh, um—” Patrick is not a very good liar. “It’s very hot? We just got here yesterday. I haven’t really seen anything yet.”

“Trust me, if you’ve driven through town once, you’ve seen it,” grins the other boy. “I’m Gabe, by the way, since Joe is apparently terrible at introductions.”

Joe grunts, shoving a fork into his face. “Introduce yourself. I’m not your mother.”

“No, I’ve seen your mother,” Gabe smirks, “just last night in fact.”

Joe chews his food unbothered. “Dick,” he mutters.

“But really,” Gabe turns back on Patrick, “you’re going to have to give us stories. Pete’s been terrible lording his big city life over us, like anything he did at ten is worth bragging about. Tell me you’ve been to a party. And I mean a real party. I am not talking about the birthday kind.”

Patrick ducks under Gabe expectant stare, trying to remember if he’s ever done anything story-worthy in his life. He isn’t exactly a party person.

“I mean, a few,” he says, waffling his hand. “That’s not really my thing though. I’ll go if there’s a good band playing, you know? Can’t exactly get into most clubs looking like this.” He gestures at himself, grimacing because he knows exactly what he looks like. Hot stuff, he is not.

“Bullshit!”

Patrick cringes as Pete’s sudden outcry rings out behind him. Pete glares down at him, one hand balled on his hip, the other crushing Bebe’s new fries. “ _You’ve_ been inside a club before?” he demands, eyes sharp and incredulous.

Patrick shrivels. Yep, he knows _exactly_ what he looks like. Looking in the mirror, he wouldn’t believe himself either. “They have eighteen-and-under nights sometimes,” he mumbles, “Anyone can go.”

Pete stomps over. He’s wearing these bright purple Chucks that slap the floor as he walks. He drops the fries in front of Bebe but doesn’t sit down, crossing his arms instead. “That’s such bullshit.”

Patrick slowly straightens. He doesn’t like being accused of lying. As always, his annoyance quickly takes over his embarrassment. “What’s your problem, man?”

“Nothing,” shoots back Pete. His smile is back in full force and exactly as mocking as Patrick remembers. His eyes dance up and down Patrick’s frame. “What would a person like you even do in a club? Dance? Yeah right!” His laughter is loud and brittle and mean.

Patrick picks up his tray and stands up. “Right. I’m going to go.”

He turns and manages three steps away before voices rise behind him. Someone calls Pete a dirty name. Another person, probably Joe, calls after him. Patrick clutches his tray and marches away. It’s fine. He’s fine.

Patrick’s should have known even small high schools were full of assholes.

*


	2. Chapter 2

Patrick makes it all the way to the end of the week without another run in with Pete and his crew. He makes an exception for Joe, because they’re in the same year and it would be practically impossible to avoid the one person in most of classes that he knows, but he turns down the boy’s offers to hang out after school all the same. From what he’s seen, Joe’s thick with Pete and Andy and the rest and Patrick isn’t interested in repeating his same mistakes.

Pete smirks whenever they cross each other. He still calls Patrick ‘Saint Patrick’ whenever he can—usually just loud enough to turn heads and make people giggle—but the playful edge to his tone is gone. Whatever gratitude Patrick experienced during their first meeting in the church has officially worn off. He scowls right back whenever he sees Pete coming.

“I need a smoke,” Joe says as they link up during Friday’s afternoon break between classes. This seems to be the time Joe has set aside to hang with Patrick, especially since Patrick refuses to step within a twenty-foot radius of Pete’s table at lunch. “You want one? I know a spot.”

“I don’t smoke,” Patrick returns, but follows Joe as he turns away from the bright, sunlit front lawn they were heading towards and makes for a less crowded hallway. Patrick doesn’t really want to go outside and get sweaty before his next class anyway, even though fresh air might be nice. He hangs back as they reach a slim, unlabeled door.

“You straightedge?” Joe asks, pausing too even as he paws at his pocket for his smokes. “You know, you should really talk to Andy. He’s into all that stuff.”

Patrick shakes his head. “Just asthmatic.”

“Well, you should talk to Andy anyway,” Joe replies. He raises a hand as Patrick’s shoulders hunch. “I know, Pete’s a jerk. That’s not exactly news. But Andy and Gabe and Bebe are cool. I told them about your tapes.”

That’s the other thing Patrick really likes about Joe, beside the convenience of someone in his year to talk to. Joe’s into talking about music almost as much as Patrick. He’s likes harder stuff than Patrick mostly, but never fails to engage in rabbit hole debates about whatever song is stuck in Patrick’s head. Patrick gets the impression the town’s music ban has only inflamed Joe’s love for all things dirty and loud. 

They push through the door, which turns out to lead into a utility room of some sort. There’s a washing machine and boxes of dingy uniforms, so Patrick figures they must be near the gym.

“This place is only used by the night janitors,” Joe explains, hopping on the washer and pushing open a thin window near the ceiling. “Andy broke the lock ages ago, but no one’s fixed it yet.”

“Andy did?” asks Patrick surprised.

“He’s something of an anarchist,” Joe tells him. “He says it’s inhuman that schools limit our inherent right to privacy or something. You should hear him call Principal Waters a warden to his face. It’s hilarious.”

“That’s ballsy.”

Joe snorts, lighting up his cigarette. “I heard he tried to do a hunger strike for vegan options back when he was a freshman. I’m don’t know all the details, but I believe it.”

Patrick crosses his arms and leans against a shelf half-full of cleaning supplies, trying not to wrinkle his nose as Joe’s smoke fills the room.

“Are Andy and them into music too?” Patrick asks, thinking about what Joe had said before. It’s funny that after only a few days in this town, he understands why Joe had phrased the question that way the first time they met. Just yesterday a girl in Patrick’s history class full on sneered at him when she spotted his _Pink Floyd_ shirt.

“Yeah, man, they’re into music.” Joe smiles a bit, like he’s thinking of something funny. “Seriously, you’ve got to get over this thing with Pete. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’m not even _doing_ anything,” Patrick defends, crossing his arms. “He’s the one acting like a dick.”

Joe just shrugs in an infuriating _if-you-say-so_ way.

As Joe sucks down his mid-afternoon nicotine, Patrick commits his own teenage rebellion by stuffing on his headphones. After barely avoiding his aunt’s pointed needling when he’d started humming _Billie Jean_ over the dishes, Patrick has become more than a little paranoid about hiding his music. He doesn’t even try to wear his Walkman around town, half convinced a cop’s going to ticket him on his way to school. In the security of this little room, Patrick presses play and leans his head back, sighing as the first beats of _Boys Don’t Cry_ hit his ears.

They get a few blissful minutes of solitude, before the door bangs open. Patrick’s already scrambling to get his headphones tucked away when he recognizes Pete and some girl he doesn’t know crashing in. She doesn’t seem to notice her an audience, but Pete does, pulling her hands away from his face and drawling, “Well, if it isn’t Saint Patrick.”

“Just Patrick is fine, thanks.” Patrick smiles tightly, shoving his tape player away.

Joe looks over, bobbing his head casually. “Hey, Pete. Hey, Debby.”

The girl—Debby—is a blonde, skinny thing even shorter than Pete. A cheerleading skirt swishes around her thighs and someone else’s letterman jacket sits snug around her shoulders. She jerks back at the sight of them, before hissing at Pete, “I thought you said this place would be empty.”

“It’s supposed to be.” Pete captures one of her errant hands, pressing a kiss to her palm. It’s annoyingly smooth. He turns on Joe. “What’s with spilling the party secrets? We can’t have a secret club house if every wannabe gets to know about it.”

Joe, in turn, just raises his eyebrows. “Maybe you should have knocked then.”

“I sort of had my hands full, dude,” snorts Pete. His eyes slide to Patrick again, maybe noticing the way Patrick is staring at a hickey already bruising on Pete’s neck. “Enjoying the view, little man? Want to stick around and watch the peep show?”

Patrick immediately drops his eyes, blushing. “That’s perverted.”

“What?” grins Pete meanly. “Is Debby not your type? That’s pretty rude, Saint Patrick. She’s a cute girl. Unless, that’s part of the problem. Hey, what team are you swinging for anyway? I admit, you’ve got the look of a Cubs fan to me. Is it bears that do it for you?”

A familiar, ugly heat rushes through Patrick. He straightens so fast the shelf behind him rattles. “Shut up!”

“Yeah, Pete, actually. Shut up,” says Joe, sliding off the washing machine. “Does Bebe know you’re in here? Or Ashlee?”

The easy grin on Pete’s face melts off. “Mind your own business,” he snaps.

“Wait.” Debby steps back from Pete. “Ashlee Simpson? I thought you were with Bebe. You didn’t tell me you were messing around with Ashlee!”

“I didn’t say I was going with Bebe either. You just assumed,” shrugs Pete. He trails his fingers up her arm, leaning in to stage-whisper, “What’s it matter? Let’s not pretend you’re a white-wedding chick here, Debs.”

Debby shrieks, yanking her arms back. “She’s my captain, Pete! She’ll kill me if she finds out!”

“I mean, so is your boyfriend,” says Pete carelessly. “Honestly, I’m more worried about him killing me than Ashlee.”

“God, you’re such an asshole!” Debby shoves Pete hard in the chest, pushing him clear into the opposite wall where he collides with a thump. “What the hell was I thinking?”

She shrieks as she storms out of the closet. The door bangs loudly after her.

Pete pushes up from the wall, rolling his shoulders. He rounds back on the two of them. “Fan-fucking-tastic!” he snaps. “Really great going. I so appreciate the assist there, Joe.”

Joe shrugs, gathering up his backpack and killing his cigarette on the cement wall. “You’re the one playing with fire. For the record, I never claimed to be a fireman.”

“God, you’re becoming as lame as this one,” Pete sneers, throwing a hand at Patrick. Then, as if that jogs his memory that he hates Patrick’s guts, he spits, “What? No stories about all the girls you banged in Chicago? No sermon about waiting for marriage? I hear that’s what all fat kids tell themselves when they can’t get laid.”

Patrick stiffens all the way down to his toes. “Dude,” comes Joe’s sharp hiss.

Patrick doesn’t say anything at all. The next sound he makes is the crunch of Pete’s face crumpling under his fist.

Pete collapses to the floor like a wet cardboard cutout. Distantly, there’s a pop of heat on Patrick’s knuckles. His vision is so red, he can barely make out the shock on Pete’s face beneath the hand he clutches to his nose.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” Patrick spits.

There’s too much thunder in his ears to hear what Pete shoots back, but he definitely does. There’s a smirk building under all that blood that’s gushing out his nose. Patrick walks away before he can do something even stupider, like stomp on the fucker’s leg.

His mom can’t afford another expensive mistake.

*

_“Patrick Stumph, please report to the principal’s office. That’s Patrick Stumph, to the principal.”_

The crackle of the loudspeakers hits Patrick differently sitting in his desk, head down near his bruised fingers. There’s an instant smattering of gossip, shushed quickly by the teacher. Patrick can feel Joe’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t turn around.

He’s fucked up royally. He already knows it.

When he sees his aunt in front of the front office, kitten heals tapping, his stomach bottoms out. Aunt Sally looks like his mom, but her hair is on the darker side of auburn and teased beyond physics. Her mouth is a thin, pink, unhappy line.

“There you are.” She snaps her fingers, waving him over. “Hurry up! They’re waiting.”

Patrick scurries over. “Where’s my mom?”

“Your mother isn’t feeling well, Patrick. You know that.” She grips his shoulder in her claw-like manicure as if he’s going to run. “I can’t believe you’re already causing trouble in your first week. Your mother doesn’t need this kind of stress.”

Patrick already knows. He knew the second his anger faded. Cowed, he follows his aunt inside, barely looking up as they shuffle into the Principal Water’s office. They aren’t the first ones in.

Pete is slumped in a chair before the principal’s desk with an ice pack on his face. Behind him, fingers curled around Pete’s chair, stands Patrick’s number one enemy—Pastor Wentz. They both look up as Patrick and his aunt enter. To Patrick’s dawning horror, they share the same chin. The preacher, Patrick realizes, is Pete’s father.

“Oh, Pastor Wentz. I am so embarrassed,” says Patrick’s aunt immediately, reaching out for his arm. “Look at your boy’s face! Oh! Is his nose broken?”

“Mrs. Vaughn, please,” interrupts the principal. He’s a middling man with speckled gray hair and a thin, baritone voice. He gestures at the single chair left in front of his desk. “Patrick, if you would take a seat.”

Patrick sits. Pete dully retracts his legs from their slouch to let him in. Patrick hazards a glance at Pete, but the other boy holds a thousand-yard stare somewhere above the principal’s head. There’s dried blood crusting his upper lip and staining the hem of his shirt.

“Now, I’ve already heard Pete’s side of the story,” Principal Waters begins, shuffling away a thick file on his desk. He pulls out a new, thin file, on the side of which he writes Patrick’s name before laying it open. “Pete claims Patrick started the fight and that he never hit back. I wouldn’t normally take a student one their word alone, Mrs. Vaughn, but as I can see your nephew has no injuries, this lends credit to his story. Patrick? Is Pete’s claim correct?”

Patrick nods his head glumly. There’s no use denying it. The anger he felt early is nothing compared to the way he hates himself in this moment. He’s been so fucking stupid.

“Do you have anything else to add?” Principal Waters prompts.

“Sorry,” Patrick mutters into his lap. He hears Pete shift in his chair, but can’t bring himself to look up. “I shouldn’t have hit him.”

“Well, that’s a start,” the principal says drolly. He writes something in the second file, then closes it, steeping his fingers on top. “Obviously, I don’t have to tell you boys fighting is unacceptable.”

“No,” Patrick mumbles. Beside him, Pete quietly echoes, “No, sir.”

“Right.” Principal Waters clears his throat, before addressing the adults in the room. “Well, fighting is an automatic suspension for both parties regardless of blame. Pastor Wentz, I’m afraid given Pete’s record I’ll have to suspend him for a full week.”

Pastor Wentz nods solemnly. Much like his son, his face is impassive. “I understand. Thank you for your continued patience in dealing with my son.” Patrick blinks. It’s the first thing the preacher has said since Patrick walked in and the sober, almost soft tone, is a complete switch from what Patrick had experienced in the church. There’s no fiery sermon, just a steady note of disappointment. Patrick does glance over this time. Pete’s slouch is gone. He huddles in his chair, staring at the floor much like Patrick, his jaw working.

“I didn’t hit him,” Pete protests quietly. Patrick winces at the nasally tone.

“Not now,” says the pastor. “We’ll discuss this at home, Peter.” Pete folds even further in his chair at his father’s words.

Principal Waters clears his throat. “Now, Mrs. Vaughn, I’ve sent for your nephew’s file to be faxed from his last school, but we haven’t received it yet. Typically, our policy is to base appropriate discipline on prior infractions. A fight like this, with Patrick as the instigator, would normally result in a three day suspension on first offense. However, if Patrick has been in fights before…”

The principal trails off. Patrick bites his cheek. He nods, throat tight.

“I see,” sighs the principal. He makes another note in his file. “Well, then let’s make it even and call it a week’s suspension for both of them. Pastor Wentz, thank you for coming in. Mrs. Vaughn, if you could stay a moment more. There’s another matter I’d like to speak to you and Patrick about.”

Patrick didn’t think it was possible for his spirits to sink any lower. He keeps is head down as Pete and the preacher shuffle out, then watches as the principal steeples his fingers again on his desk.

“I’ve gotten reports from a few staff members that Patrick might be possession of some contraband items. Now, I know Patrick is new to our school, but…”

*

That night, Patrick lays on the fold out couch and listens to his mom and aunt fight.

“I want you here. Of course, I do Patricia! I just wish you’d told me the boy was so troubled.”

Patrick can’t hear his mother’s response from down in the basement, but he does hear her footsteps on the stairs a few minutes later.She descends slowly, face pale, fingers softly gripping the rail. He sits up as she comes and sits on his bed, looking him in the face for maybe the first time since the move.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I’m really, really sorry, Mom.”

It’s like the divorce has taken something vital out of her lifestream. Her smile wanes as quickly as it comes. “I know, Patrick. I know things have been hard for us lately. I know I’ve asked a lot of you.”

“I’m fine,” Patrick denies. The last thing he wants is his mom to blame herself, even though hearing her say that makes him want to cry. “It was my fault. I wasn’t thinking.”

His mom shakes her head. “I need you to be thinking. Your aunt is doing us a big favor taking us in. Your father left us with nothing, Patrick. _Nothing_. Until I can find a new job, I need you be on your best behavior. We can’t afford any more mistakes.”

“I know.” Patrick curls his fingers into his jeans. He’s already bit his nails down into his skin. “I’ll be better. I’m sorry. I can get a job or something. Help out.”

His mom smiles faintly, cupping his cheek. “You’re a good boy, Patrick.”

“I’m sorry I messed up again,” Patrick says, leaning into her touch. Her hands are colder than he remembers. He knows she hasn’t been eating well.

His mom sighs. She stands and smooths down her long skirt. “Your aunt has asked that you go and apologize to the Wentz family. That church has done a lot for her ever since your uncle passed. I think that’s a good idea.”

Patrick nods. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” She reaches out again, this time stroking his hair. “I’m sorry the school confiscated your tape player, Patrick. I know it might seem unfair, but this is a small town. You have to learn to play by their rules.”

Patrick’s been trying not to think about it. “What kind of town bans music, Mom?” he can’t help but ask. He feels the loss of his Walkman like a wound. He’d been so careful and he hadn’t even lasted a week.

His mom just sighs. “It’s their way. Maybe it’s for the best right now. You can focus on keeping your head down, working on your grades. You get so into your music sometimes, Patrick, maybe a break will help you focus on new things.”

Patrick bites his lip. He has to look away, blinking rapidly as his throat closes. He’d thought—he didn’t know what he’d thought. That maybe his mom would understand how unfair this town’s whole law was. That maybe she got how much Patrick depended on his music, how he sometimes thought more in notes than in words.

He should have known better. Music had always been a sore spot for her. One that had only gotten worse the longer and longer his dad spent away chasing his songs and dreams and spending away their savings.

“I’ve talked with Sally,” continues his mom softly. “You can keep your tapes and guitar, but they need to stay down here. She also asks that if you’re going to play, that you play quietly and within reasonable hours. She doesn’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

So his aunt basically wants to brick him up in the basement and pretend he doesn’t exist. Patrick gets it. He sort of wishes he didn’t exist right now either.“Okay,” he agrees quietly.

His mom cards her fingers through his hair one last time, before she pulls away. “It’s not forever, Patrick. Just until we get back on our feet. Maybe you can save up and buy a new tape player once you get that job.”

It’s a hollow consolation. Patrick can’t do anything but nod. He doesn’t look up as his mom retreats back upstairs, just lays down on his bed and listens to the silence so loud he drowns in it.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your rec for this week is [black banners raised](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928064) by [Trojie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie). Did you know you needed Joe and Ray to form a bond once My Chem ended? No, I didn't either. 
> 
> Reminder, as always, that you can find me on tumblr @[pyrchance](https://pyrchance.tumblr.com).


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday morning dawns like a red-fingered serial killer. Patrick sits in the back of his aunt’s ancient, green Volkswagen, pressing his nails into his palms with his head bowed. He keeps the same posture all throughout the service, aware of the many eyes on the back of his neck. After the last amen, as the pews begin to empty, he reluctantly picks his way to the front of the church.

Pastor Wentz still stands near the alter, talking with the little old lady who plays the plucky piano. Pete sits sullenly on the front pew, and raises his head as Patrick approaches. Patrick flinches at the sight of his twin black eyes and bruised nose.

The tiny pianist totters away shortly. Patrick avoids Pete’s eyes, ringing his hands and stepping up to the preacher. “Um, Pastor Wentz?”

“Ah, Patrick.” The preacher doesn’t look surprised to see him. He and Pete share the same weaponized smile. It makes Patrick feel like an idiot for not realizing their relation sooner. “It’s good that you made it. I had hoped to see you today.”

It’s a warmer welcome than Patrick expected. Pastor Wentz is different again from how he was in the office; that solemn, serious parent has been replaced by one who projects with a smile, as if he’s still addressing the filled pews.

“I wanted to apologize,” Patrick says. “I shouldn’t have fought with your son.” He struggles to keep his voice even, knowing he has an audience in the remaining members of the congregation. His aunt stands with his mother just a few yards back, watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes. With a deep breath, Patrick does what he’s been dreading and turns to face Pete. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you.”

Pete’s wide mouth sits in a sulky line. He crosses his arms and sits back in the pew, not saying a word. The preacher sighs. “Thank you for the wise gesture, Patrick. Peter? What do you say? Forgive, as the Lord teaches us, and you will be forgiven.”

Pete glares up from behind his bangs. “I didn’t even him him.”

The expression on the preacher’s face drops severely. “Don’t throw stones from glasses houses. Accept the apology. And sit up. You’re slouching like a thug.”

The sloven posture reluctantly disappears as Pete straightens out his spine. His eyes are sharp when he looks at Patrick, promising murder as he obedient parrots, “Apology accepted.”

The preacher sighs again, but doesn’t dig in against Pete’s obvious reticence. He says to Patrick, “It was good of you to come here. I wanted to speak with you anyway. I understand that you’re something of a musician.”

“Yes,” Patrick says surprised. He can’t help himself when his eyes narrow. “I understand you don’t approve of that, sir.”

Pastor Wentz laughs. It’s odd, how much more he looks like his son when he does that. They’ve got got that inherent edge of charisma Patrick’s always lacked, like they truly believe whatever comes from their mouths is gold. It must be some douchebag gene Patrick’s glad skipped him over.

“On the contrary, I value music highly,” Pastor Wentz corrects. “Of course, it saddens me to see the state of music today. So much of what is played on the radio is nothing but sex and violence and drugs. I truly fear for the youths that have been exposed to these influences without defense. Oh, I know that’s hard for boys your age to understand,” he adds, seeing the protest building on Patrick’s face. “The path of the father is often a mystery to their sons.”

“I don’t see how liking to music is bad,” Patrick frowns. “It’s just music.”

“I know.” Pastor Wentz smiles again. “That’s why it’s best to listen to your elders.”

That’s a bit much for Patrick. Arguments bubble up behind his teeth. He doesn’t know what to _do_ with his protests, however. He promised his mother he wouldn’t cause trouble.

On the bench, Pete exhales loudly. “Can I go now?”

The condescension on Pastor Wentz’s face dips into momentary annoyance as he glances at his son. He fixes his face quickly, but Patrick’s already caught the look. “Actually, this discussion involves you too, Peter,” the preacher says. “Since you both have a week full of free time available to you, I thought I would present an opportunity for you both to mend your animosity. Do you play any instruments, Patrick?”

Patrick feels whiplash at the sudden swerve. “Um, yes. Guitar and drums, mostly. Some other things too.”

“How about the piano?”

“Yeah. Yes, a bit, I mean.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear.”Pastor Wentz nods his head on the piano on stage. “Peter has an interest in music as well. I’d like for him to channel it into something wholesome. Our pianist, Mrs. Lettie, is planning to move to be closer to her grandchildren soon. How would you feel about teaching Peter how to play for our church services?”

Pete is on his feet in an instant. “What? Dad!”

“Oh, uh,” stutters Patrick, blindsided. “I don’t know. I’ve never given lessons before. And I don’t have a car. I’m not sure if my mom could drive me.”

“Peter has a car,” Pastor Wentz says. “He can pick you up.”

“Dad!” protests Pete. “No! I didn’t agree to this!”

“Quiet, Peter,” Pastor Wentz says firmly. “I’ve already decided. I am tired of you doing nothing but lazing around and getting into trouble.”

“He is the one that hit me!” Pete nearly shrieks, waving a hand at his broken face.

“Completely unprovoked, I’m sure,” the preacher remarks dryly. “Please, son. I raised you.”

Patrick takes a step back. He doesn’t want a single piece of whatever this is. There’s tension popping between Pete and the preacher that reminds Patrick far too much like the fights he heard around his own dad when the money began to run out. He’s half expecting kitchen plates to begin flying out from nowhere.

“I was planning on getting a job,” Patrick says, trying to backtrack. “I don’t know if I’ll have time. And my mom wants me to focus on my grades. ”

Pastor Wentz sighs. “Listen, Patrick. You strike me as a smart boy. I won’t force you into it, if you think your differences are too great. I will say, however, that many people are looking at you right now and deciding what sort of person you are. This is an opportunity to rebuild your reputation.” He looks at Pete sharply. “ _Both_ of your reputations.”

The fight abruptly goes out of Pete. It’s like someone has taken a hammer and yanked out all the nails in Pete’s back. Patrick feels his own objections deflate. He looks at Pete, trying to see if there’s any more ways to get out of this, but Pete just looks at the floor, jaw clenched.

Right. Patrick exhales slowly. He shoves a polite smile on his face. “What time did you have in mind, Pastor?”

*

His mom and aunt are thrilled when he tells them the news that night, though that doesn’t stop Aunt Sally from saying speculatively, “Pastor Wentz is such a kind man. I just hope the two of your boys don’t waste his good will.”

The next day, Patrick sits on his front porch with his chin in his hands, wearing a collared shirt. His aunt wouldn’t let him go near the church without one and Patrick is trying to be one his best behavior.

He’s meant to be meeting Pete for his first lesson at ten. Almost a full hour passes before it really dawns on Patrick that he’s been stood up.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

His aunt, on the other hand, is shocked. “What do you mean it’s cancelled? Did the pastor call?” Patrick tries to explain, but his aunt just shakes her head. “No. You’re not getting out of this that a easily. Wash your face. You’re all sweaty. I’m going to get my purse.”

Ten minutes later, they rattle together in his aunt’s Volkswagen and pull up to a near empty church. Before he gets out, she presses two quarters into his palm. “There’s a payphone down the street. If you need a ride home, I’d rather you called me than bother the pastor.”

“Thanks,” he says, earning a stern nod in response. She speeds away as soon as he gets the door shut, kicking up a cloud of red dirt from the unpaved parking lot before she pulls onto the main drag.

There are almost no cars in front of the church. Patrick spots an ancient black truck standing on rusted wheel rims and a yellow Chevy with black racing stripes down the hood. Two guesses which one belongs to Pete. Patrick is already scowling as he makes his way up the front steps, not bothering to knock as he lets himself in.

Empty of its parishioners, the church lacks its typical grandiosity. The white walls and wooden pews looked plain and worn when exposed. Patrick always sort of assumed church looked like the stained glass, brick cathedrals he’s seen on TV.So far, his experience has been far less opulent. It is painfully quiet inside the church as well, even when Patrick calls out hello.

“Pete?” he calls, making his way to the front where an elevated platform held the piano and alter. He climbs up it, making his way to the piano and pushing up the lid. The keys are mostly in tune. He sits down, slowly playing through a few scales to get his fingers warmed up. It’s been a while since he had a piano available to him. He finds himself picking out the chords to an older Bowie song, humming as he fishes for the melody.

“What’s that?”

Patrick doesn’t answer right away. He finishes off the chorus before turning around, finding Pete looking sullen and and scowling near the front of the pews.

“You’re late,” he says, taking his hands off the keys and ignoring the question. “You were supposed to pick me up you asshole.”

Pete crosses his arms, walking up to the stage and leaning against it with his hip. The bruises under his eyes make him look like he hasn’t slept in a thousand years, but his eyes are a bright, shiny brown. “You were supposed to take the hint, Saint Patrick.”

“I don’t want to be here either,” Patrick reminds him.

Pete snorts. “Then why are you here?”

“My aunt,” Patrick says truthfully. He turns, facing Pete more fully, and cocks his head. “If you aren’t going to do this, why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be terrorizing the cheerleading team or something?”

Pete looks away, sounding stiff when he answers, “My dad will look for my car if it’s not here.”

“You could take the bus,” Patrick responds, wondering why he’s even bothering. “What even is your plan here?”

“Sleep,” Pete grunts, rolling his shoulders. There must be a bed or a couch in that backroom then. Patrick wonders what for. “I was just getting there when your stupid song woke me up.”

“It’s Bowie.”

“What?”

“The song. It’s by Bowie.” Patrick shrugs. “You asked.”

Pete’s arms tighten across his chest. He frowns. “Whatever. You can leave now. I’m going back to sleep.”

Patrick looks back at the piano. It really has been a while since he’s had one available. Having to mute his guitar back home is killing him.

“Do you mind if I stay a bit? My aunt will know something’s up if I just go home now.”

“Do what you like,” Pete says. He turns and ambles for a door to the left of the alter Patrick hadn’t noticed. “I don’t give a fuck.”

Patrick considers the space Pete leaves as he disappears behind the door, before slowly shifting back to the piano. He puts his hands on the keys and lets his eyes slip shut. After a minute, he begins to play.

He walks home that afternoon. Pete only reemerges from the backroom around noon, grunting, “Lesson’s over” as he makes for the exit.

Patrick stays a little longer after that, puzzling over the chords to a song he last heard on the radio back in Chicago. He only stops when the shadows begin to deepen and Patrick knows he won’t melt stepping outside.

He tucks the fifty cents his aunt had given him into his pocket and starts walking. Patrick doesn’t have any savings. He figures two quarters towards a new tape deck is better than no quarters at all.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your fic rec of the week is [A handful of hopeful words](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20878859) by [carbonbased000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/pseuds/carbonbased000). It features author!Pete and editor!Patrick and is a very good time.


	4. Chapter 4

“There’s a boy at the door for you.”

Patrick looks up to see his aunt standing at the top of the stairs. He frowns. “Pete Wentz?”

“No. I don’t know him.” Her tone says this is highly suspect. “Don’t be too long if you’re going out. Remember your curfew is at sunset.”

Patrick’s curfew is another of Aunt Sally’s new rules, along with telling an adult before he so much as goes for a walk around the block and asking to use the telephone. Patrick doesn’t have anyone to call, he doesn’t think his school friends from Chicago are the type to weather long distances, but the restriction chafes all the same. He tries not to feel paranoid when she follows behind him as he opens the front door.

Joe stands on the stoop, backpack on, his hands crossed around an armful of books and papers. He looks Patrick over critically when he opens the door, inspecting him from the head to toe, and scoffs.

“You don’t look dead. Guess that means I can tell everyone you won.”

“You were there,” Patrick reminds him pointedly. He closes the door tighter, lowering his voice in hopes that his aunt won’t hear. “What are you doing here? How do you even know where I live.”

“The phonebook, genius.” Joe shifts the books in his arms, neatening the stack, before shoving them forward. “I heard you’re suspended. Figured you’d need someone to get your work for the week. It’s not bad. You’re missing a lab in science, but Mr. O’Neil says you can make it up when you get back.”

It’s actually a really thoughtful gesture. Patrick feels his defensiveness drop as he takes the books. “Thanks. I guess, do you want to come in a second?”

Joe face flashes with surprise, before he bobs his head. Inside, his aunt peers at Joe as if he were a snake-oil salesman as Patrick leads him through the hallway and down into his basement room. Joe’s eyes alight on Patrick’s tape collection immediately. He bounds over as Patrick pours the school work onto the pull-out couch.

“I thought you were joking about all the jazz,” Joe says, squinting down at a collection of big band hits.

“I like jazz.”

“And funk and new wave and disco,” counts Joe, running his fingers down the stacks.

“I don’t have _that_ much disco,” protests Patrick.

“You have, like, enough,” Joe contends. He picks up a tape of _Iron Maiden_. “At least there’s some decent stuff mixed in here too.”

Decent stuff for Joe means anything with wailing guitars and heavy drums. Patrick lets Joe peruse as he reads through his upcoming work list, feeling no shame about his tape collection even as Joe pokes holes at his more eclectic selections. He’s not a heathen. It isn’t like there isn’t enough rock music in there to satisfy him.

“What’s this one?”

Patrick glances up to see which tape Joe is holding. He flushes. Joe’s picked up one of the black tapes stacked near the end, the ones that Patrick very pointedly did not label. “That’s nothing.”

This is the wrong response. Joe only inspects the tape closer. “What? Is it a mix? Did you give it to a girl or something? What’s with the face?”

Patrick sets down his school work and gets up off his bed. He takes the tape from Joe’s hand and puts it back with the other ones, straightening the stack. “It really is nothing. Just some stuff I recorded. I don’t know. It’s not good.”

Joe looks like Patrick has grown another head. “What? No way. I’ve got to hear this.” He squints at the stack of unlabeled tapes. “You’ve got like fifteen of these.”

“No,” says Patrick immediately. “I mean it, no.”

Joe stands up, looking around Patrick’s room. His eyes land on Patrick’s guitar. “You didn’t tell me you played! What the hell, Patrick?”

“Would you keep your voice down!” Patrick hisses, straining his ears to listen for the creak of his aunt upstairs. He gets up, but is too slow to stop Joe from picking up Patrick’s guitar and strumming. Patrick cringes, expecting an ugly jumble of notes, only for Joe to pick out a perfect _C_ chord.

“Wait,” says Patrick. “ _You_ play?”

“Obviously. Now, get out your Walkman,” Joe commands, even as his fingers dance seamlessly across the guitar’s fretboard. “I want to hear that tape.”

The reminder throws a downer on Patrick’s budding interest. “Principal Waters has my Walkman,” he scowls, jamming his hand over the guitar neck and pulling that away from Joe too. “So unless you have a spare, we’re not listening to anything any time soon.”

“Shit, really?” Patrick’s answering stare is flat. “That fucking sucks.” Joe says, looking truly remorseful. Patrick tries to let his nerves go, setting his guitar back in its case, before crossing back to his tapes and sitting down at his desk. Just looking at his now useless tapes fills him with a deep sense of longing.

“My mom is okay with me getting a job,” Patrick says, breathing deeply. “So if you know any places that are hiring, well, let me know, I guess.” He shrugs. When Joe doesn’t say anything, Patrick looks up t see Joe’s eyes are bouncing between him and his guitar.

“Joe?” he prompts, when the silence turns unnerving.

Joe’s eyebrows push together. “Hold on. I’m thinking.” It looks like hard work. Joe looks at the stack of white tapes—Patrick’s recordings—sittings on the desk. His eyes bounce to the guitar again. Then he squints at Patrick, scrutinizing him with all the markers of a salesman about to make a great pitch. Maybe his aunt was right to be suspicious. Finally, after an increasingly long minute, Joe nods. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

“Okay, what?” Patrick folds his arms. “You’re being weird.”

“Can’t tell you yet,” Joe says, shaking his head. “I’ll let you know when I can. Just—don’t go for any jobs yet, okay? I might have something.”

Patrick stares at him flatly. “You might have something.”

“Something better,” Joe nods. He adds quickly, “It’s not selling weed! Don’t look at me like that.”

“Jesus!” Patrick flinches. “Could you yell that any louder?”

“Give me a few days,” Joe says, gathering up his backpack with a hurried sort of excitement. “I should know soon if things are a go.”

“If _what_ is?” demands Patrick. “What the heck, Joe!”

“Soon,” Joe repeats as he makes for the stairs. “Just trust me on this one. I’ve got an idea.”

The smile he gives Patrick in that moment is the most energetic Patrick has ever seen him. Then Joe disappears up and out of sight leaving Patrick with nothing more than questions.

*

On Tuesday, Patrick gets another ride from his aunt to the church and another fifty cents. Pete’s yellow Chevy is in the parking lot, but he doesn’t appear as Patrick sets himself up at the piano and runs through some scales. He plays for a few hours, his fingers remembering more and more about the piano the longer he sits at it, and then he walks home.

It’s a pattern that holds for the next couple of days, until Patrick walks in one morning to find Pete lounging on the front pew, arm under his head and one leg kicked up. Patrick stops short.

“What are you doing here?”

Pete’s gaze slides over to him. He sits up, and Patrick can’t help but notice he’s wearing the truly ugliest neon green tank top in existence. It’s too short for him. Patrick adverts his eyes as the skin beneath shifts and hopes the pink on his face is blamed on the morning sun.

“My dad’s coming in later,” says Pete, after he’s heaved himself into an upright position. The back of his hair is rumpled from laying down. “You need to teach me something.”

Patrick climbs up the stage slowly, frowning as he sets down his backpack beside the piano. He’d thought he’d do some school work while he was here, now that he had it. “I thought you didn’t care about your dad.”

Pete hops up on the stage after Patrick, shrugging as he comes near the piano. He moves with that sort of confidence Patrick hates because it’s usually contained within a letterman jacket or a tight skirt, not losers like him. Pete doesn’t have a letterman, but that stupid tank top is loud enough when he shrugs. “He’ll take away my keys if he sees we’ve been slacking off. I’ve got a date on Friday.”

“You’ve been slacking,” corrects Patrick. “I’ve been playing the piano, as asked.”

“Whatever.” Pete plops down on the bench, smirking as Patrick immediately stands up, putting as much space between them as possible. Pete cracks his knuckles loudly, then places them in the entirely wrong position on the keys. “You’ll get in trouble too if you don’t. Now hurry up and show me something.”

Patrick takes a deep breath. Dealing with Pete reminds him of dealing with a tiny dog, the kind that rich ladies carry around in their purses at the mall. Mostly, Pete just barks a lot and wears stupid outfits, but Patrick was always wary of sticking his hand in and risking getting teeth.

He grits his own jaw, and slowly walks closer. “Move your hand down three keys. No, your right hand. Don’t even bother with the left. There’s no way your playing with both hands today. Keep your fingers on the white keys. Okay, now press down with your first finger.”

Pete scowls under the instructions, pressing down with his index finger. Patrick rolls his eyes. “Your _first_ finger. That’s your thumb.”

Pete takes his hands off the keys and scowls at him. “No, it’s not. That’s my fucking thumb. This is my first finger.” He flips Patrick off. “Oh, whoops, that’s finger number two.”

You would think standing in a church would give Patrick more patience.“Well in piano it’s called your first finger,” he snaps. He holds up his hands. “Look—one, two three, four, five. Thumbs are ones. Pinkies are fives.” He wiggles his fingers sarcastically to demonstrate, then nods back at the keys. “Now play your first finger.”

“It’s a thumb,” mutters Pete, but he puts his hands back up and plays the note anyway.

Finally. “Okay,” Patrick nods. “That’s a middle C. Your right hand is in C position. The keys go up and down from A to G in order. I’m just talking about the white ones right now. Ignore the black keys. So if you wanted to play an F for example, you’d just—”

A loud F note abruptly cuts him off. Patrick blinks as Pete glares up at him. “I know how scales work.”

That pulls Patrick up short. “You’ve played an instrument before?”

“The bass,” he says. The look in his eyes is fierce, “and I don’t care if you don’t believe me, just don’t treat me like an idiot.”

Thrown, Patrick blinks at him. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

Pete looks away and doesn’t say anything. After a minute, Patrick pushes past the awkwardness. He figures maybe this lesson will be best if they talk to each other as little as possible. He kneels down by his backpack and gets out his notebook, turning to a random blank page and scribbling out a series of notes by their letter names. There’s no measure for timing, but he figures even Pete will be able to get it. He props the simple song on the music stand. Pete looks from the notebook to Patrick’s face with a tight expression, before slowly beginning to pluck the keys.

He stops abruptly when he gets about six notes in, just as _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ starts shaping up into its melody. Pete slams his fists down on the keys, a cacophony of noise filling the church. Patrick jumps, nearly giving himself a heart attack.

“What the hell, Pete!”

Bench screeching, Pete shoves himself up from the piano, stalking several feet away. He makes as if he’s going to retreat to the backroom, before turning around suddenly. He marches back up to Patrick and flings a finger at his chest. “I literally just told you not to treat me like an idiot!”

“I’m not!” says Patrick, flabbergasted.

“Then what the hell is this?” Pete grabs the notebook off the piano and shoves it in Patrick’s face. Patrick swats it away, frowning.

“It’s a song!” He snatches the notebook from Pete. The beginning of his infamous temper ticks up. “You told me to teach you a song and I am! What the hell is your problem?” 

“That’s not a song!” Pete snarls. “That’s a fucking nursery rhyme!”

“Oh, get over yourself!” Patrick snaps. “You’re a beginner. It’s the most beginner song I know. Jesus, five seconds ago you couldn’t even find middle C!”

“God, you’re a prick!” Pete stalks away again. He paces the length of the stage, fists working at his sides. Patrick watches this hissy fit with a growing sense of impatience.

“Seriously, what the hell is your problem, Pete? I’m doing what you asked. I’m teaching you a goddamn song.”

“Fuck you,” shoots back Pete. He shuts Patrick down the moment he sees his mouth open. “No, seriously. Fuck you. I’m not doing this. ”

Patrick folds his arms. “So you’re just going to quit? What, five seconds in and you’re done? What about being a good boy for daddy?”

For a second, it looks like Pete is going to pay back Patrick for his punch. Patrick sees the line on the ground as it slides under his feet, and braces himself. Pete’s eyes are wild and almost glowing as he turns on him, the muscles in his arms bulging as his fingernails bite into his palms.

Then, suddenly, Pete is gone. Patrick lets out a breath as Pete turns away from him, shoving his hands inside his pockets.

“Fuck him too,” Pete declares venomously. He stomps off to the backroom and slams the door loud enough to rattle the windows. Patrick gapes after him, adrenaline beating through his veins with nowhere to go.

In a fit, he kicks the bench, feeling nothing but pathetic as it topples over.

“What an _asshole!_ ” Patrick hisses. His fingers curls into a fist so tight is entire hand shakes. He slowly lets it go, closing his eyes and breathing out.

When he can open his eyes against without feeling the desire to pick up the bench and bash Pete over the head with it, he finally looks around the empty church and wonders what to do now.

*

Pastor Wentz walks in carrying a briefcase and a bible. He spies Patrick at the piano up on a stage and smiles widely. “Hard at work, Patrick?”

“Oh, um,” Patrick scrambles to his feet, pushing off of the bench. There’s a new scuff mark on the side, but Patrick doubts the preacher will notice. “Yes, sir. Sorry. We were just taking a break.”

Pastor Wentz takes the steps to the alter, setting down his brief case and frowning as he contemplates the church empty. “Where’s Peter?”

This is the part Patrick’s been dreading. “Uh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. I can go get him if you want.”

“I’m right here.” The door to the backroom opens. Pete slumps out, for some reason now wearing a jacket despite the heat. His hood is pulled up, bangs hanging low over his face. “Sorry. Had to piss.”

The preacher immediately frowns. “Don’t be crude.” 

“Sorry,” Pete says again, voice oddly passive. He walks past Patrick without once looking at him and sits down at the piano bench. His right hand falls on C position. His left hand sits a little too far down the keys. He plays a few random notes without looking up.

Patrick glances anxiously at the preacher, sensing his eyes on them even as he shuffles with some papers in his briefcase, and leans over the piano.

“What are you doing?” whispers Patrick. Pete’s eyes flash to him, red, dull, and angry. Patrick can’t believe this. While he’s been here panicking, Pete’s been off getting high.

“What are you boys working on over there?” calls Pastor Wentz. Patrick jerks back. Pete shrugs without turning around. Then, without saying anything, he plucks out _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ from the keys. He plays it entirely by ear, henpecking the keys and playing slowly, but never once hitting a wrong note.

When he finishes, he looks up at Patrick with a face lined in challenge. Patrick swallows. Pete raises his eyes pointedly, cocking his head towards his father, silently commanding that it’s Patrick’s turn to sell it.

Patrick wipes his sweaty palms against his thighs and anxiously raises his voice. “That’s good,” he proclaims loudly—awkwardly. Pete’s father would have to be an idiot to boy it. “Much better. Uh, be sure to use the proper fingerings for the keys though.”

Pete nods, dropping his head back to the keys. He plays through the song again, not changing one thing about his stupid fingers.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. He forces himself to smile in encouragement. “Good job.”

From behind them comes an unsubtle cough. “I would have thought you’d be a bit further along than that, boys,” says the preacher when they’ve turned. He drops all pretext of busying himself with his brief case and walks towards them. Pete huddles over the keys and doesn’t look up. That’s probably a good idea, considering his red eyes. It leaves Patrick to carry the bullshitting though.

He sifts though his memories of his earliest piano lessons. He knows it sounds like pretentious waffling when he says, “Foundation is very important. We’ve been mostly looking at finger placement and, um, scales. The basics, you know?”

Despite the small frown on his face, Pastor Wentz seems to accept this at face value. “I do believe in building solid foundations.” He puts a hand on Pete’s shoulders and leaves it there, squeezing. “I want you to take this seriously, son. If I can’t make something of you here, you know what the next option is.”

Patrick blinks at this statement. More, he blinks at the affect the preacher’s words have on Pete, who all but curls in on himself. His hood and bangs conceal the expression on his face, but Patrick can still make out his jaw working. Pete says, “Yes, sir.”

“There’s a good boy.” Pastor Wentz squeezes Pete’s shoulder again before stepping back. He spreads his hands and smiles. “Well, boys, you’ve been at it for a while. I’ve got an afternoon bible study group coming in. Patrick, perhaps you’d like to join us?”

“Uh, no. No, thank you,” says Patrick quickly. “I should get home.”

“Another time then,” agrees the preacher.

“Yeah. Sure,” Patrick says. Anything to get out of there.

He makes his escape shortly after that, waiting to be called out the entire time for their rather terrible lie until he finally makes it outside. He gets about ten feet away from the church and into the clear, before the door opens behind him. Pete stumbles out. He glares at Patrick, kicking his shoes in the dust as he stomps past him.

“Come on.”

“What?” frowns Patrick. “Where?”

Pete jangles a set of car keys in the air and sneers. “My dad thinks I drove you here, remember? I’m not staying for fucking bible study. Let’s go.”

He stalks off to the yellow Chevy without another word, leaving Patrick to sigh and reluctantly follow after him. The Chevy coughs when Pete starts it and rumbles loudly, but otherwise pulls smoothly out into the street when Patrick gets in the car.

It’s silent in the car. There’s no radio, just an empty hole in the dash where one once lived. Pete gets them on the main drag and heading towards downtown before Patrick realizes Pete must have no idea where he lives. When he glances over, the expression on Pete’s face is still aggressive. It’s only as they get closer to Patrick’s turn, that he hesitantly speaks up, “It’s a left up here.”

Without a word, Pete jams his blinker on and pulls over. He skids them to a stop by the curb and stares straight ahead when Patrick turns to look as him.

“Uh, Pete?” Pete doesn’t acknowledge him. “I said it was a left.”

“I’m not driving you home,” Pete bites out. He still doesn’t look at Patrick. “Get out. I’ve got places to be.”

Patrick regards him, mouth falling open. They’re not even far from his house. It would take literally all of five minutes to take him home. This is a dick move, even for Pete. “You’re kidding me right?”

“Get out,” repeats Pete.

“Don’t be a fucking ass.” Patrick stubbornly crossing his arms. “Just drive me home.”

There’s a sudden explosion of movement. Patrick doesn’t see it coming. Patrick flinches, thinking maybe he’s going to be hit, but Pete’s hands slam against the steering wheel.

“I said get out!” he shrieks. “Get out! Get out! Get out! Just leave me the fuck alone!”

It’s like he’s turned hysterical. Pete’s hands repeatedly beat the steering wheel. His head tosses back, neck straining like he’s have a fit. Patrick is so startled he grabs the doorknob and tumbles to the curb, barely managing to get his feet clear before the Chevy jerks away.

Patrick’s left sitting on the curb, ears ringing, wondering what the hell just happened.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your fic rec for the week is [Ortus/Occasum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486952) by [fanatic_by_definition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanatic_by_definition/pseuds/fanatic_by_definition). It's a really nice coming of age story with Patrick's graduation from high school. 
> 
> Also, remember you can find me on tumblr @[pyrchance](https://pyrchance.tumblr.com).


	5. Chapter 5

On the Monday after his suspension ends, Patrick checks and rechecks his outfit five times before giving up and pulling a hat low over his eyes. He knows people will be looking at him; there is just very little he can actually do about it. It isn’t the first time he’s wished for invisibility. He would absolutely kill for some of headphones and a tape player, but seeing as he has all of two dollars to his name he isn’t holding his breath.

He walks slowly to school on purpose, barely making it to his classroom by the time the first bell rings. Sure enough, stares follow him to his desk as he sits down. Patrick can’t tell if people are curious or scared or pissed and doesn’t look up from his desk to check. At least he’s spared the indignity of sitting by himself when Joe walks in, hair a mess and eyes sleepy, and immediately drops into the seat beside him.

“Hey,” yawns Joe, putting his head down on the desk and closing his eyes.

The ease of it warms something in Patrick. At least he won’t be entirely ostracized. “Hi,” he whispers back.

Joe sticks tight to him all the way throughout the morning, even showing up in the hallways to walk with him when their schedules don’t align. Patrick is absurdly grateful. He hasn’t seen Pete yet, but he keeps on _hearing_ about him. Apparently, most of the school is only getting to see the mess of Pete’s face for the first time. It’s funny, only because after a week of keeping semi-company with him Patrick barely registers the fading bruises anymore.

By the time lunch rolls around, Patrick already knows he’s not stepping foot near the cafeteria. He might as well save the dollar and his dignity by skipping it.

Surprisingly, Joe dogs after him when he turns away. Patrick glances at him, feeling guilty. “You’re not going to eat?”

“Nah,” says Joe. “Where are we going?” Patrick shrugs. He hadn’t really thought that far. Joe smiles, like he gets it. “Come on. The club house should be empty.”

Patrick is trepidatious to step foot back in the place the fight happened, but Joe pushes the door open to an empty utility room. According to him, the staff doesn’t know they’d been in here even with the fight. He and Pete had only gotten caught for the punch because some freshman had seen Pete bleeding on his way to the bathroom and snitched.

As Joe climbs up onto the washer to light his cigarette, Patrick tries to force himself to relax a bit. There’s a dry mop bucket in a corner that he overturns and sits on, drumming his hands on his thighs and wishing more than anything that he has his tapes.

“So I heard about the piano thing,” Joe starts, blowing his smoke out the window and looking down at Patrick incredulously. “How’s that going?”

“Terrible,” mutters Patrick. “How’d you hear about it?”

“Oh, Bebe told me. You know she goes to Wentz’s church, right?”

Patrick tries to picture Bebe with her bright red lipstick and ripped up jeans blending into the sea of pastels and florals on Sundays. The image doesn’t form. “I haven’t seen her,” he admits.

Joe shrugs. “I don’t know if she goes every Sunday. Andy’s been spouting off about the horrors of organized religion or something lately. Her folks are pretty lax about it. I think she mostly just turns up for Pete.”

The name sours in Patrick’s stomach. He can feel himself stiffen, but can’t stop it. Joe notices and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. Patrick blurts out, “Please don’t.” He’s not sure if he can handle another of Joe’s _Pete-is-a-dick-but-you-should-get-along-anyway_ talks.

“I wasn’t going to.” Joe taps his cigarette, sending a scattering of ashes to the floor. At least it’s cement in here. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about something else. You remember that thing I said last week? I think I can get you in.”

Patrick sits up. “What thing? You still haven’t explained what this _thing_ is, Joe.”

“Oh right.” Joe pauses, straightening up himself and crossing his legs underneath himself. “So, what I’m about to tell you is top secret. I mean, like, breathe a word of it and you won’t just have Pete on your ass, you’ll have half the student body coming for you.”

“Okay?” ventures Patrick. He squints his eyes. “Just so you know, you’re really not making this seem less like selling drugs.”

“It’s not drugs,” Joe scowls. He takes another drag from his cigarette before beginning again. “Okay, so. You know the old barn on the other side of the railroad tracks? The one that looks like it’s missing half of its roof?” Patrick shakes his head no. Joe sighs. “Okay, well, there’s a barn out there. It belongs to this elderly lady who’s the grandma to these two brothers. You might not have met them. I think they’re Catholic or something. They probably don’t go to your church.”

” _You_ don’t go to my church and I know you,” Patrick shoots back. He crosses his arms. “You know I didn’t even go to church until I moved to this town. It’s not _my_ church.”

“Whatever. I’m Jewish. All you WASPy types are the same to me.” Joe flicks his hand, scattering more ashes on the cement. “Anyway, Mikey and Gerard—those are the brothers—they are also big into music. Gerard was a little older when the town ordinance was passed. I think he got that Pastor Wentz was full of shit right from the beginning. So he and Mikey get this _idea_ to start a band. Live music wasn’t banned at first; the town ordinance just started with the profanity censorship. So they get a couple of guys together and actually _do_ it, they get their band going, and they go _hard_ into making exactly the kind of music Pastor Wentz hates.”

“That’s awesome,” says Patrick, annoyance dropping off as the thought of someone actually sticking it to the preacher draws him in.

“Yeah, it really was,” Joe nods. “Of course, then Pastor Wentz got pissed and pushed for an expansion of the ordinance to what it is now, which _sucked,_ but it was also sort of too late already. The idea had already caught on, and a bunch of other kids started forming bands too, in secret now of course. And remember that big old barn their grandma owns? Well, it just so happens to fall on the opposite side of the train tracks, which means technically it’s outside of the city limits. Which means if they wanted to run an underground spot for all the local bands to play, they’d already have the place.”

Patrick stands up so fast his head spins. “Joe, you fucker. Are you telling me there’s live music around here? This is not a joke?”

“Yeah, dude, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Joe grins wide and triumphant. “Now sit down. You’re missing the best part.” He waits until Patrick perches back down on the bucket. It takes a moment. Patrick’s practically vibrating in excitement. Then Joe continues, “The only rule of the place is that it’s bands only. It’s too much of a risk to just let everyone know—Wentz runs the biggest church in town, he gets inside of people’s heads—so only people who are in a band get invited to the barn. That way if we’re caught, the blame is shared. Everyone is an active participant so no one can say they just accidentally wandered in.”

Patrick blinks up at Joe, stomach sinking. “But…I’m not in a band.”

Joe grins down at him. “Yeah, I know. I’m not either. I only know about all this because Andy knows I’m into music and knows I’m not under Wentz’s thumb. _He’s_ in like fifteen different bands, but he said that if I ever got together the right people he’d play drums for us.” He pauses, “So…”

Patrick’s brain stalls. “So?”

Joe is grinning so hard his face looks wild. He leans in, “So, do you want to start a band, Patrick?”

*

Patrick floats through the rest of his classes that day on Cloud 9. Not only is he maybe _in a band_ , something he’s wanted his whole life, but Joe tells him that if they’re good enough they’ll be eligible to collect a small cover charge and actually get some money.

His good mood lasts up until the minute he steps through the door, where it abruptly plummets into some kind of nightmare. He spots an unfamiliar black Buick in the driveway, but doesn’t register what that means until he walks into the living room to find Pastor Wentz holding court with Aunt Sally and his mother. Pete sulks on a sofa, doing that thing where he’s not looking at anything.

As Patrick walks in, he catches the tail end of the preacher saying, “Boys without fathers do tend to grow up wild. Oh, I’m sure you’ve done your best, Patricia, but boys like Patrick need a strong hand to shepherd them. It’s hardly your fault.”

To Patrick’s dawning horror, his mom is nodding slowly, looking up at the preacher with a focus Patrick hasn’t seen in weeks. Her gaze falls down to her lap as Patrick steps inside.

“Oh, Patrick, we were waiting for you,” says the preacher, apparently unabashed about getting caught talking about him behind his back. Patrick really hates adults sometimes, this one in particular.

“What’s going on?” he asks cautiously, eyes roving from his mom to his aunt to Pete and gaining nothing. Two out of the three aren’t even looking at him, while his aunt merely glances at him, sniffs, and says a bit too happily, “Pastor Wentz came by to tell us how pleased he is that you and Peter are getting along.”

“Oh.” Patrick relaxes a bit. His gaze slides over to Pete, but Pete is once again staring at some spot in the air like he can’t hear or see anything. A little more hesitant around him since Pete’s outburst in the car on Friday, Patrick just shrugs. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“I wanted to set up further lessons,” Pastor Wentz adds, sipping on a cup of tea his aunt must have served. Everything about him screams arrogance. Patrick hopes the tea burns. “I’d hate to see the effort you’ve put in go to waste. Of course, I understand that you thought you might be too busy for it, Patrick?”

“Nonsense!” declares his aunt immediately, shooting a glare at Patrick as if daring him to disagree. “All he does is laze around in the basement all day.”

Patrick gapes at her. She is the one restricting his movement with all her stupid rules. Where was Patrick supposed to go anyway? It isn’t like he has a car.

He remembers the plan that Joe and he had talked about at school and breathes out to speak calmly. “I was going to start looking for a job. My friend Joe was telling me about an opening in his dad’s office.”

“Of course he’ll do it, pastor,” Aunt Sally continues, rolling over him as if he never said a word. “When did you have in mind?”

Patrick can’t believe this. He looks to his mom, but she’s appears as checked out of the conversation as Pete, staring down at her hands with a vacant expression. He tries again, struggling to keep his voice level. “That’s not—Look, I’m just not sure if I’ll have time. Like I said, Joe told me about a job—”

“Really, Patrick,” snaps out his aunt. Her fingers pinch her cup and set it down with a sharp click. “After everything the preacher has already done for us, after everything _you’ve_ done to Peter, you can’t act even little bit grateful?”

“I—I’m not trying to be _rude_ ,” Patrick balks. “I’m just—”

“It’s okay, Patrick. I understand.” Pastor Wentz spreads his hands. His face falls into a warm, fatherly smile, convincing except that Patrick would bet money if he’d knock on it that smile would ring out hollow. “Let’s not be too harsh on the boy, Sally. He’s going through a rough time.” Pastor Wentz shifts, setting down his tea and saucer and facing Patrick fully. “It’s admirable that you want to work, Patrick. Heaven knows I wish my own boy had that same drive. Of course I’d be happy to pay you for your time.”

His aunt’s face sours. “Pastor Wentz, you really don’t need to do that.”

The preacher waves her off. “Nonsense. It was always my intention.” He pauses and Patrick knows with a sinking feeling there’s no way out. “So, what do you say, Patrick?”

Patrick looks at his mother again, at Pete, even at his aunt, but none of their faces have an answer for him, not one he wants to read. He stares at Pete the longest, looking for _some_ kind of sign of disturbance—surely Pete is as done with this as he is—but Pete just sits there with nothing at all on his face and no tension in his body. Finally, Patrick sighs. “I’d love to.”

“That’s great,” smiles Pastor Wentz. “I am so glad you and Peter are getting along.” He turns back to Patrick’s aunt. “You mentioned dinner, Sally?”

*

Pete is oddly silent as he follows Patrick down into the basement to wait for supper. They’ve both been exiled while the adults talk, which is such bullshit. Pete stands at the foot of the stairs while Patrick throws his backpack on his bed and thumps down. Patrick catches Pete’s eyes slowly scanning over his tape collection and moving boxes, before landing on his guitar.

“You can sit down,” Patrick says, feeling awkward the longer Pete goes without saying anything. He doesn’t get it. Sometimes it’s like Pete can’t get himself to shut up and other times he’s like this, silent to the point of mute. It’s unnerving. Frankly, after the last time they were together and Pete exploded on him, Patrick doesn’t trust it.

Pete walks over to the chair at Patrick’s desk and sits down. He glances over at the tapes but doesn’t touch them like Joe had done. In fact, after that quick glance he stares at the floor like he’s determined not to look at anything at all.

Upstairs, Patrick can faintly hear the sounds of his aunt and Pastor Wentz talking. He wonders if his mom even left the living room, or if she’s still just sitting there staring at her lap like she’s had a lobotomy. He doesn’t understand what the divorce did to her. She didn’t used to be like this.

Patrick sighs, shaking his head like he can shake his thoughts out. He contemplates his homework, but his mind is filled with too much buzzing. He finally sits up and faces Pete.

“How come you didn’t say anything?” Pete looks up. His face is that annoying blank slate that Patrick hates, maybe even more than Pete’s usual mocking smile. “Upstairs,” Patrick continues. “You don’t want to do this any more than I do.”

After a long minute, in which Patrick contemplates shaking Pete to make him talk, Pete blinks. A little bit of color shades into his face as his eyes lose some of that glazed over emptiness. “We’re not going to,” says Pete. He sounds tired. “Obviously.”

It’s immediately clear to Patrick that he means to just continue as they have been—faking it. Patrick shakes his head. He just doesn’t see how that’s going to work in the long run. Patrick needs a plan more solid than that. “What about in two weeks when your dad wants to hear you play something? He already said he didn’t think we did enough the last time.”

Pete shakes his head. More emotion comes into his face. It’s weird to watch, like Pete is waking up from a nap right before his eyes. His features bend into annoyance as the corners of his eyes pinch. “Please. He doesn’t actually expect me to learn anything.”

“I’m pretty sure he does, Pete,” Patrick says. “He literally just offered to pay me to teach you.”

“To babysit me,” Pete scoffs, and Patrick pulls up short. Pete glares at the expression he must be making, before his eyes cut away. “Don’t be so naive, Saint Patrick. He doesn’t actually care if I learn the piano. He probably doesn’t think I’m capable of it anyway. He just wants an excuse to keep me busy in the church so I can’t go anywhere.”

“That’s—” _Manipulative. Creepy. Exactly what the pastor would do._

“The truth!” snaps Pete. “I’m not fucking lying.”

Patrick jumps. Pete’s sudden outburst surprises him— _again_. He waits for a further eruption, but Pete doesn’t do anything but sit there, scowling.

After a minute of sitting there bewildered and sort of annoyed, Patrick says, “I didn’t say you were.”

Pete’s eyes narrow in on him. He’s quiet for a moment, before he looks away and mutters, “Whatever.”

Patrick’s had enough of that. He sits up straighter, swing his legs off of the bed. “No, seriously, asshole. I didn’t say that.”

Surprise and then anger flicker across Pete’s face. His scowl deepens. “I know what you think about me. You aren’t exactly subtle.”

“I think you’re an asshole,” Patrick hisses and gets the pleasure of watching Pete jerk back. “I never said you were a liar. Stop putting words in my mouth.”

Pete’s eyes widen like Patrick’s anger is somehow unexpected. This is ironic when his nose is still slightly bruised from Patrick’s fist. Then, his gaze narrows again. The lines of his face carve into stone. “Whatever,” he repeats again, exhaling sharply.

Patrick almost lets him have it. Pete looks like a string wound to snap and Patrick isn’t ready for another outburst like what happened in the car. But all the same, he can’t let this go. It isn’t in his nature to let things simmer.

“Look,” says Patrick. “I don’t know what’s going on with you and your dad, but it’s clearly pretty messed up. If you say he’s doing all this just to stop you from going out, I believe you. Your dad isn’t exactly my favorite person.”

Pete looks up. He still looks tensed to the point of pain. His shoulders must hurt from being held as tight as that. “You don’t know anything about my dad.”

“I know he’s the one responsible for this town’s shitty music ban,” Patrick corrects, surprised and almost pleased that Pete is responding. “That makes him a dick in my books.”

“He’s a pastor,” Pete says, as the lines around his mouth deepen. Patrick wonders what he gets for defending him. “He’s a man of God.”

“Not my god,” replies Patrick primly. He huffs at Pete’s look of surprise. “Why does everyone in this town think I’m some kind of church boy? I don’t even go to church! Not willingly. I know more about, I don’t know, _Elton John_ than I do about the bible!”

Slowly, very slowly, Pete’s shoulders lower. He stares at Patrick past the point of creepiness, enough for it to really start to wig Patrick out. Then his expression changes. For the first time since they met, Patrick finds himself on the receiving end of a tiny smile. “I don’t know, Saint Patrick. Maybe it’s cause you look like an alter boy.”

It’s a cautious sort of teasing, not mean. Patrick finds himself snorting, shocked at himself to find Pete amusing. “Or one of those chubby, flying babies,” he returns.

“Oh shit!” gapes Pete. “Dude, you are totally a little cherub!” He appears delighted by this, which probably means Patrick should be offended, but he’s not. He’s too relieved none of this has blown up in his face and resulted in another fight.

Maybe it’s time to put things to rest. “I am sorry, you know,” Patrick says hesitantly, once Pete’s amusement as died down a little. Pete looks up, confused. Patrick sighs, gesturing at his own face. “I really shouldn’t have hit you, even if you _were_ being a dick. I, uh, have a temper sometimes.”

Surprisingly, Pete actually smiles again at this. “Yeah, dude. I noticed.” After a moment, his eyes flicker and his smile dies down. He looks at Patrick from under his bangs cautiously. “I guess, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said that shit. I was just trying to get you angry.”

“Well,” says Patrick. “Mission accomplished.”

“Yeah,” sighs Pete, touching his own face and wincing. “Guess I sort of asked for it.”

In the minute of silence that follows an air of awkwardness descends between them. It’s better than the hostile tension they’d been sharing before, but it’s even harder for Patrick to look at Pete now. He doesn’t think everything is fixed between them—he still maintains Pete is an asshole—but it almost feels like they’re back on square one.

“So,” Pete drawls, also looking uncomfortable when Patrick glances back at him. “I kind of thought you were full of shit about music,” he admits, nodding towards Patrick’s tapes.

The awkwardness eases incrementally. Patrick let’s himself ease with it. “Now who’s calling who a liar?”

Pete’s answering grin is tiny and fleeting as if he too is having trouble looking at Patrick. “Mind if I look?” he finally asks.

“That depends,” says Patrick.

“On what?” frowns Pete.

“How do you feel about our Lord and Savior Elton John?”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Sorry for the delay — I'm gonna try to get this bad boy back up on its normal Friday update schedule now that I'm a bit settled into school again.
> 
> Your fic rec of the week is [All That Shit Seems To Disappear When I'm With You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/721277) by [gala_apples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples). It's got the best sort of rare pair with Mikey/Pete/Frank/Patrick and I love it. 
> 
> Reminder that you can always find me on tumblr @[pyrchance](https://pyrchance.tumblr.com).


	6. Chapter 6

“Seriously, Ma. We’re fine!” hollers Joe, closing his door with a minor slam. Patrick looks around Joe’s room curiously but it’s all fairly standard as far as teenage boys go. There’s a pile of laundry on a chair, a hastily-made bed with dark grey covers, and a giant poster of Han Solo on the wall. Most important is the electric guitar leaned up on the bed and an amp small enough it fits on Joe’s bookshelf.

Joe is practically buzzing when he turns around. He has been since he told Patrick about the band thing a few days ago. He picks up his guitar, flicks on the amp, and settles on his bed with the most alert gaze Patrick’s seen on him yet. Music is a good look on him.

“Okay, so, I’ve seen your tapes,” Joe says, foot tapping on the ground like he’s already mid-song. “I figure we can just mess around with some covers first, get a feel for playing together. We can figure out our own sound later, you know? Just so long as it’s not disco.”

“I have _two_ tapes of disco,” Patrick protests. “Two.”

“Yeah, dude, it’s tragic,” Joe agrees. He thumbs a few random chords before looking up at Patrick. “So, what’d you want to start with?”

Patrick wipes his palms on his jeans and mourns their emptiness. “I, uh, don’t have my guitar. My aunt doesn’t want me to carry it outside the house.”

“She’s a Wentz groupie?” Joe deduces. Patrick nods. “That sucks. Do you think we could convince her to let us practice are your place?”

“Are you kidding? She made me apologize for mentioning Paul McCartney last night. She’d take one look at your electric guitar and faint.” Patrick pauses. This first official band practice is not going the way it always had in Patrick’s dreams. For one, there are considerably less people than he’d imagined. He ventures, “Maybe we could just take turns? Or—” he says quickly, seeing the way Joe frowns “—I can drum? Do you have an sticks or, I don’t know, pencils I could use?”

“Andy’s got us covered on drums,” Joe says. He cocks his head. “We need a singer. You said you made some recordings right?”

At the mere mention of his personal tapes, Patrick turns pink. “I told you those were nothing.”

“I mean, we’re not really anything yet,” says Joe, oddly sage-like. “Why don’t you just try it for now? We can work on smuggling your guitar out next and then go from there.”

It makes an annoying amount of sense. This does nothing to stop Patrick’s heart from thumping wildly away in his chest or his pits from beginning sweating like he’s just run the mile. It doesn’t matter if little baby Patrick had always dreamed about being a big rock star. Actual real life Patrick is terrified because he _knows_ just how much he is not star material. Just the thought of embarrassing himself on stage makes him want to vomit.

“Seriously,” Joe interrupts, jarring Patrick from silent mental panic, “it’s just for today. If you suck we’ll find somebody else. I just don’t want to waste time.”

Again, it’s all very logical. Patrick finds it very annoying that despite his stoner appearance Joe cuts through all his swampy bullshit like he’s wearing waders. Patrick swallows through the fluttering nerves in his throat. “You _have_ to tell me if I suck,” he commands. “Seriously. Don’t just laugh. I’d rather just know.”

“I’m not a dick,” squawks Joe, offended. “Of course I will. It’s not like I want to be in a band with a shit singer anyway.”

“Okay, okay—fine, okay.” Patrick closes his eyes, pretending not to feel the way his momentary panic has already spread sweat stains through his t-shirt. This is just temporary after all. It’s not like Patrick is _actually_ the singer.

When he opens his eyes again, Joe is still eyeing at him warily like he’s going to hurl. That notion doesn’t feel that far away in reality. Patrick breathes out again, shakes his head, and takes the plunge.

“So, what songs can you play?”

*

When Patrick walks out of school the next day, he finds Pete Wentz waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. For a second, Patrick tenses, before he remembers the last time they were together was not entirely awful. He still walks directly forward, not making eye contact, just in case Pete is not actually waiting there for him.

“Saint Patrick. Hey, hold up a minute.”

Patrick stops. Pete shuffles over. He’s been wearing his hood up more, Patrick’s noticed absently, but maybe that’s just to keep the stares off.

Patrick still isn’t sure where they stand with each other. He doesn’t think he’s risking another fight by letting Pete walk up to him, but Pete isn’t looking at him properly either.

“What’s up?” Patrick eventually ventures, pleased when stopping one step up from the sidewalk gives him an advantage of height. Pete will have to look up to meet his eyes, not that he tries.

“My dad wants you to start tomorrow,” Pete tells him. He’s wearing a faint unhappy expression, but at least he’s not a blank slate this time. He doesn’t look ready to explode either.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Patrick frowns. Joe tells him that band nights usually happen on Fridays and Saturdays, not that they’re ready for it yet. They’ve barely managed to squeeze in two practices this week with Patrick’s aunt breathing over his neck. He doesn’t want to start a precedent of giving up his weekends though.

“Yeah,” says Pete, shifting on his feet.

“What time?” asks Patrick.

“Five.”

“That’s kind of late.”

“I know,” says Pete. He sighs, blowing his bangs out of his face. “There’s a church group that meets from in the afternoon. He doesn’t want us disturbing them.”

Patrick remembers what Pete had said about the pastor trying to keep him from going out and wonders if this is part of it. He sighs. He already knows despite his reticence there aren’t a lot of ways for him out of this.

“I’m gonna need a ride.”

*

The yellow Chevy is idling near the curb when Patrick makes his way huffing and puffing back from Joe’s that Saturday. He almost can’t believe that Pete actually upheld his word about the ride. He holds his finger out in the one-minute sign at Pete, hoping he catches it through his window, before stumbling into his house.

“I don’t like the look of that car,” Aunt Sally declares as he comes through the door. She’s seated in the living room, neck craned at a gap in the curtains. Patrick’s mom is reading a book in an armchair beside her.

“Hey, I’m going,” Patrick says, dropping his backpack near the door.

His aunt takes one look at him and sniffs. “Go change your shirt. You’re not walking into the church looking like that.”

Personally, Patrick doubts the empty church building cares much about the small holes lining the bottom of his t-shirt. He nods, glancing at the book in his mom’s lap as he passes her to the basement, and pulling on another shirt from his moving box. One day, he might actually get around to unpacking. When he walks back up the stairs, his aunt gives him another shrewd once over.

“I don’t like you spending so much time at this friend’s house,” she says. “Not if you’re going to be late for your prior commitments.”

“We were just studying,” Patrick lies, coming up and giving his mom a kiss on the hair she doesn’t acknowledge. Patrick ignores the familiar squeeze in his chest.

His aunt’s eyes narrow at him. “At the very least, I’d like to meet him. What was his last name?”

“Joe Trohman.” Patrick hasn’t had his friends vetted through an adult since was ten. He has no doubt his aunt is fishing her memories for the name among Wentz’s parishioners, not that she’ll have any luck. “I can invite him over here if you’d prefer that,” he adds, just to watch his aunt’s mouth thin.

“Just don’t be late again,” she snaps at him. “Go. You’re keeping them waiting.”

Patrick just barely refrains from rolling his eyes. He pulls on the backpack he dropped at the door and walks back out, getting into the yellow Chevy with only a vague sense of foreboding. His senses are proven right when he notices the tight grip Pete has on the steering wheel. He doesn’t look up as Patrick climbs in.

“Everything good?” Patrick asks cautiously.

“Fine,” grunts Pete, throwing the car into drive before Patrick even clicks on his seatbelt. His hood is drawn low over his face, bangs hiding his eyes. It isn’t hard to see the thunderclouds over Pete’s head as they race through the streets. Patrick wisely holds his tongue, biting back the annoyance that rises in him at another of Pete’s mercurial moods.

The church parking lot is in the process of emptying as they pull in. Patrick sort of wants to wait until everyone leaves, but Pete gets out without a word leaving Patrick no choice but to tug his hat down and follow him. There’s a circle of chairs arranged on the stage that members of whatever church group was meeting are just stacking away. Pastor Wentz spots them from the pulpit and smiles widely, but Pete just makes for the backroom without comment. After a moments hesitation, and a very reluctant wave back at the pastor, Patrick follows.

The backroom of the church turns out to be some kind of common room with a long table in the middle, a sink and fridge in the back, and a sofa against one wall. There’s also a bathroom and what looks like a door to an office branching back further. Pete walks over to counter and turns on a coffee machine there. Patrick pulls out one of the seats at the table and sits down.

“You want some?” Pete asks when the coffee has begun to brew.

Patrick is just glad to hear Pete say something. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

He doesn’t actually know what to do once Pete hands him a cup of black coffee though. The skies are growing gray and heavy outside and Patrick’s never been much of a coffee drinker, especially drinking it black. Pete flops down onto the couch and downs half of his mug in about two gulps, curling up with his ratty shoes on the cushion and cradling the drink close to his face.

It’s then that Patrick notices the mottling of bruise high under Pete’s jaw. They look newer, red deepening to purple, and Patrick would almost swear he’d put them there himself if they weren’t so far away from Pete’s nose.

“What the fuck?” says Patrick sharply, earning an annoyed look from Pete as he sits up abruptly. It lasts all about two seconds before Pete grasps what Patrick’s looking at.

“It’s none of your business,” Pete grunts, yanking on his hood again like the shadows can hide anything now that Patrick’s spotted it.

“No, seriously,” Patrick says. “I didn’t give you those. Did you seriously get into _another_ fight?”

Pete rolls his eyes and sinks further back into the couch, a move that might have seemed relaxed if it weren’t for the muscles standing taut through Pete’s neck.

That’s just how the pastor finds them when he pokes his head in; the two of them glaring at each other while Pete’s hands grow pale around his mug.

“Alright in here, boys?”

Pete jerks his head down, bangs hiding his face even more as he mutters a faint, “Yessir.”

Patrick is still watching Pete draw into himself when the pastor calls his name in a question. “What?” He shakes himself, looking up to find Pastor Wentz peering down at him with his usual overly friendly twinkle. Patrick can’t help but glance back at Pete, wondering how any father could smile like that with a kid as obviously not okay as Pete.

Pete is watching him back when Patrick looks over. Their eyes meet. The expression on Pete’s face gives one clear command — _don’t._

Don’t what? There’s a sickly feeling churning in Patrick’s gut he thinks might be outrage. The glint in Pete’s eyes promises retribution when Patrick hasn’t even said anything yet.

Patrick loses a beat, going silent long enough that pastor opens his mouth again. Patrick blurts out, “Oh yeah! No, yeah we’re good. We’re doing fine.”

Pastor Wentz’s eyes move between them, eventually settling on Pete. “I want you home by seven for dinner tonight. You’re more than welcome to join us too, Patrick.”

Pete nods again. Patrick mumbles something that is probably an affirmative, just to clear the pastor out. Then the door swings shut again and he’s left with nothing but the awkward air festering between him and Pete.

Patrick’s never been good at keeping his anger in check. He can feel it coming up now, not so much as creeping as it is crackling in his palms.

“Did your father—”

“ _No_ ,” growls Pete immediately.

“Then where the hell did those bruises come from?” Patrick demands. He isn’t sure he believes Pete. Not with the way Pete clams up every other time the pastor enters the room. Even if the pastor isn’t hitting him, there’s clearly something sour between the two.

“Believe it or not, Saint Patrick, you’re not the only person who doesn’t like me very much,” shoots back Pete, sounding exactly as defensive as he looks.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You figure it out.”

Patrick glares, unimpressed. He’s not really angry _at_ Pete but he’s having a hard time not growing annoyed either. “So what? You really did get into another fight? _Really_ , Pete?”

He knows this is the wrong thing to say; knows it even before Pete’s chin drops into his chest and his shoulders rise. “Screw you,” says Pete.

Patrick swallows down the violence in his throat. It isn’t helpful. More to the point, he isn’t looking to start shit again. He tells Pete so. At least, he does as soon as he thinks he can open his mouth without yelling.

“Okay, fine. Whatever. Do you want to play piano?”

After a moment, Pete’s hood shakes. Patrick sighs and stands. “Well, I’m going to. Thanks for the coffee.”

Patrick keeps thinking about it as he sits down at the keys to play through his warm up scales. His thoughts are caught somewhere between wondering how he hasn’t heard of even a hint of another fight at school and contemplating whether or not he really believes Pete about the pastor. He doesn’t want to doubt Pete, but none of it adds up in his head. Surely _someone_ would have noticed before then if the pastor was hitting his son. Patrick’s only been in town for a couple of weeks. If none of the adults, then surely Joe or Andy or any of the people Pete eats lunch with or kisses in janitor’s closets would have seen it and said something.

So maybe Pete really did just get into another fight. It isn’t like it’s entirely unlikely. Pete’s a genuine asshole. It’s just weird that no one at school would have caught on when Patrick _still_ gets stares walking down the hallway for punching Pete in the nose.

At least the bruise explains Pete’s terrible mood from earlier. It’s nice that there seems to be an actual reason for his standoffishness this time.

Patrick eventually manages to pull his thoughts away from Pete long enough to put the piano through its paces. He doodles with a melody that’s been stuck in his head, something he wants to show to Joe once they make a plan to free his guitar. That kills enough time when he finally looks up the streetlights are glowing outside and the emerging stars are blotted out by a thick curtain of dark, swollen clouds.

He’s not walking home in that. He draws the line at lugging his backpack for several miles under a threatening sky.

Patrick packs up quickly, gently closing the piano lid before dragging his feet to the backroom door. He almost knocks, but feels stupid raising his fist.

He’s glad he didn’t when he pushes open the door to find Pete fast asleep on the sofa. He’s sprawled loose-limped and rumpled, hood falling off his forehead and jacket twisted up around his stomach. There’s a notebook on his chest that draws Patrick’s interest, curious for the sheer fact that it looks expensive and worn and loved.

Pete’s eyes squeeze when Patrick flicks the light, nose scrunching up as he flings an arm over his eyes and groans. “Jesus, what do you want _now_?”

Patrick’s too busy swooping up the notebook that’s fallen off of Pete’s chest in his tossing. He gets about three seconds of staring at the open pages — poetry, maybe? There’s a mess of lines that pack the page in slanted capital letters — before the book is ripped from his hands.

“What the fuck, dude?” demands Pete, shoving the notebook into his jacket pocket.

Patrick raises both his hands up, embarrassed and terribly intrigued by the snooping. “What are you writing?”

Pete glares up at him, but doesn’t answer. He finishes sitting up, stretching his arms above his head with an actual crack. There are lines from the couch pressed into his face and a grumpy furrow between his eyebrows.

“So I need a ride,” Patrick says.

Pete yawns so hard his jaw cracks, putting the angry red bruise under his jaw in sharp display, before looking around the room. “Shit. What time is it?”

“I dunno. Late. I need a ride.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

“So are you going to get up or what?”

Pete grumbles but pushes up to his feet. “Anyone ever tell you you nag a lot?” Patrick opens his mouth to protest, but Pete just shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah, come on.”

Minus the insult, that was surprisingly easy. Patrick slinks along after Pete half-suspicious as Pete leads him out of the church. He watches as Pete locks the front door.

“Isn’t that, like, against the whole church thing?” Patrick asks. “What’s even in there to steal?”

“Tell my old man that,” Pete says, tucking the key away.

“Huh. I guess you are from Chicago after all.”

Pete’s eyes slide to him, but he doesn’t look offended the way he did the first time they’d talked about the city. In fact, his face is oddly calm — not in the way Patrick usually sees it, still and flat like a frozen lake, but more like the gentle movements of a lake shore. He looks exactly like a person that just woke up from a long and very much needed nap.

“Did you sleep the whole time?” Patrick asks, incredulous. He _knows_ that’s what Pete said he was doing while during their ‘lessons’ but he hadn’t really believed it.

“Nah,” yawns Pete again, as they slide into the Chevy. He blasts the heat immediately, rubbing his hands and stuffing the into the vent. “I don’t really sleep.”

Patrick has just seen evidence to the contrary, but he shrugs. “Maybe lay off the coffee.”

“Wouldn’t matter. Doesn’t help.”

Pete turns his head and backs them out of the church parking lot, flicking on his lights just before they roll into the street. The clouds are just beginning to open as they pull up to Patrick’s house. Fat drops of rain hit like bugs against the windshield.

Pete glances over at him curiously when Patrick doesn’t immediately get out of the car. “What’s up?”

It’s the bruise on Pete’s jaw that is still plaguing Patrick’s thoughts. He can’t in good conscious get out of the car without saying something, though he’s worried doing so will lead to the sudden return of Pete’s bad mood.

“I’m not going to bug you about what happened,” Patrick begins slowly, “but if there is something going on that you need help with, you should tell someone.”

“Who? You?” Pete sneers, walls visibly rising. “You don’t anything about me.”

“I know you’re not a liar,” Patrick says and he realizes that’s true. The only troubles he’s run into so far was mistaking Pete for one. “We’re not friends. I’m not saying you need to tell me, but tell someone. People shouldn’t be hitting you.”

“You did,” snaps Pete. The whites of his eyes flare like caution signs, warning Patrick to back the fuck off.

Patrick shakes his head, realizing he’s said all that he’d really needed to say. He pulls on the door handle, feeling the splat of rain on the back of his hand as he cracks it open.

“Yeah, and I shouldn’t have,” he says. “Get some sleep, Pete.”

Then he takes his backpack and goes running through the rain, only looking back once he’s on the front porch to see Pete’s face staring back at him, pale and unrecognizable through the wet glass.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day late, but not bad for being evacuated for most of the week thanks to those pesky fires. Your fic rec for this week is one of my favorite aus, [awkwardgturle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardgturtle/pseuds/awkwardgturtle)'s awesome [Truman Show 'Verse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/242263). If you're like me and every time you watch a movie you have a deep desire to make it an au, this one is for you.
> 
> Reminder that you can always find me on tumblr @[pyrchance](https://pyrchance.tumblr.com).


	7. Chapter 7

“Huh,” says Andy Hurley when the hum of Joe’s guitar fades. “Alright.”

Patrick and Joe exchange glances. They’re tucked up in Joe’s bedroom again, sharing space on Joe’s twin bed just like they have been for the past few weeks, and Patrick’s not the only one sweating under the senior’s steady stare.

Joe twitches. “Alright?”

“It’s not what I was expecting. It’s different,” Andy muses.

“So you’re in?” Joe insists. “You’ll play drums for us?”

Patrick holds his breath. He’s already wound tight from the embarrassing ordeal of singing in front of yet another person. They’ve been waiting for this confirmation since the very first night, dreaming about what it will be like when they have drums for real, but Andy just nods, easy as you please.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll do it.”

Patrick and Joe release twin sighs of relief, grinning at each other and bumping shoulders.Andy cocks his head, interrupting their mini celebration. “So, what original stuff are you working on? You won’t get on the stage with just covers.”

Their celebration dies a grimacing death. Patrick finds a neat spot to study on the wall beyond Andy’s head, while Joe’s antsy fingers tap up the frets of his guitar. For the past few weeks, between convincing his aunt to let him out of the house to see Joe and working around the two nights a week he’s meant to be ‘teaching’ Pete piano, not to mention his homework and chores and sleeping, he and Joe haven’t done much more than play with a few riffs. They _still_ haven’t worked out a plan to free his guitar, leaving Patrick with little choice but to stay pretending to be the singer, something that still makes him cringe just thinking about.

“We’ve been working on a few things,” Patrick says, nudging Joe.

Joe takes the hint, breaking into one of the newer riffs they’ve been trying out. In Patrick’s head, there’s a whole accompaniment following the rush of Joe’s fingers, pounding drums and another guitar and the thumps of a bass keeping things steady. In reality, the guitar feels flimsy and alone and fades all to quickly without support.

Andy frowns, not in an angry way but like he’s thinking. “Does it have lyrics?”

“Not exactly,” Patrick admits. He tries not to think about the several fruitless hours he and Joe have wasted trying to be _poetic_. After the first two humiliating attempts at lyric writing—where everything either turned into a cliche rhyming mess or a rip off of the radio—they’d quickly given it up as a ‘solitary’ pursuit. Patrick doesn’t know exactly what that means to Joe, but for himself it’s been nothing but staring blankly at his notebook for several long minutes after school, before giving it up to noodle around on his guitar.

“What about a name?” presses Andy.

“Give us a break, man, we weren’t going to name the band before you were in it,” Joe complains, settling his guitar aside and slouching down now that the pressure is off. Patrick isn’t surprised when the first thing he reaches for is his lighter.

“Well start thinking. You have until Friday.”

Joe chokes on his cigarette. Patrick whips around so fast his neck snaps.

“You’ll get us in?” Joe gapes, smoke sputtering out from between his lips. “ _This_ Friday?”

“They know there’s new blood in town,” Andy says, with a nod at Patrick. “I told them you were looking to start something. They’ll want to hear an audition before you’re let in though.”

“We don’t even have any _songs!_ ” Patrick protests, suddenly struck but just how fast this is moving. Screw songs. They don’t even have a real singer! He looks over at Joe to see him also frowning.

Andy just shakes his head, as unflappable as ever. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not the music. It’s the act. Come over to my place tomorrow and we can work on adding in drums to what you have.”

Holy shit. Patrick catches Joe’s eyes across and sees the same half-terrified glint in his eyes. They’re really doing this.

They’re really going to be a band.

*

It says something about how much things have changed that Patrick can walk up to Pete’s lunch table without feeling like he’s going to puke.

He and Joe have stuck to spending their lunches in the utility closet, where Joe can smoke and Patrick can talk about music without the pressure of potential parental eavesdropping. Skipping lunch means Patrick leaves school most days ravenous, but it also means he gets to pocket his lunch money. He’s getting close to the $40 he needs for a new Walkman. It’s enough to trudge through his stomach grumbling throughout the afternoon.

It’s the usual suspects at the table when Patrick walks up. Bebe is the one that spots him first, bright red lips growing thin as he draws near. In contrast, Andy gives a tiny wave of his fingers before shoveling down another forkful of leaves.

“New kid’s here,” Bebe announces. Pete and Gabe both look up, conversation cutting off as Pete turns to raise both eyebrows at this disturbance.

When Patrick pulls up at the table, Pete waits a long beat before prompting, “Sup?”

“Got a minute?” Patrick asks. “I need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.” Patrick gets Pete’s incredulity. They have a very clear do-not-interact policy at school that’s carried them peacefully through the past couple of weeks. He fidgets under the weight of all the table’s stares. Bebe, in particular, is glaring

“Why don’t you sit down, new kid?” she asks. Patrick doesn’t need to wonder why she doesn’t seem pleased to see him. He can’t imagine he impressed her by punching one of her good friends.

Patrick’s not even entirely sure why he wants to talk to Pete in private. He just does. It isn’t like they’re hiding something. He doesn’t know what Pete has told his friends but he knows from Joe and Andy that the piano situation isn’t exactly a secret. He shrugs, opening his mouth, but closes it again when Pete gives out a huge sigh and swings his feet over the bench.

“Whatever. I was done eating anyway.”

Bebe’s hard eyes follows then as Pete dumps his tray and then leads Patrick out of the cafeteria. They still get a few off looks being in such close proximity to each other, but after almost a month since the fight even that has died down. Patrick’s pleased to note that Bebe’s the first person to call him ‘new kid’ in at least a week.

It’s Pete that leads him down the hallway, stopping next to a locker that must be his and opening it up to dig around. “So,” he drawls, glancing at Patrick. “What couldn’t wait?”

“I can’t do Fridays anymore,” Patrick says. Like he’d worried originally, the pastor had jumped on his weekends, monopolizing the late afternoons of Fridays and Saturdays for Pete’s fake practice schedule. Thanks to his aunt he hadn’t been unable to refuse, but he isn’t going to give up the opportunity to play in a band just to sit around with a piano for two hours while Pete sleeps the backroom.

“Why?”

Patrick shrugs. “Does it matter? I just wanted to tell you I’m not going to make it this week. You can tell your dad—”

“No. No way.”

“I can do any other day of the week,” Patrick reasons. “He’s just going to have to deal.”

“You’ve met my dad before, right? Pastor Wentz? You might have noticed him up on the pulpit every Sunday? _That’s_ the guy you want to tell to just deal?”

“I know who your dad is, Pete.”

Patrick gets where Pete is coming from, really he does, but also he’s in a _band_ now. That really does take precedence over his fear of the pastor’s ire.

It does give him pause enough to scan Pete though, like he’s taken to ever since he found that bruise on Pete’s jaw. Pete’s hood is down around his neck. He’s lively in that way that Patrick remembers from when they’d first met, animated and stubborn and not the least bit shut down. They haven’t talked about it since that night in Pete’s car, but there’s been a sort of lull between them anyway. Pete hasn’t gone that low or flipped out since that night.

“So what do you want to do?” asks Patrick, crossing his arms. “I’m serious about Fridays. I’ve got plans.”

Pete grunts and closes his locker. If he was doing anything other than fucking around in there, Patrick can’t tell. Pete leans against the line of lockers, looking Patrick over with his usual tinge of mockery.

“What plans? You and Trohman making it official?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “If we do you’ll be the first to know.”

Pete sulks a little, like he’s annoyed he couldn’t get a rise out of Patrick. It’s a habit that’s become somewhat familiar after their bi-weekly car rides together. Apparently, Pete really is just a dick that likes to needle under people’s skin.

Patrick won’t lie and say he doesn’t find Pete annoying as fuck a lot of the time, but it’s a lot easier to take when the tone is more teasing than antagonistic. Pete’s casual insinuations are nothing to get angry over, not when punching him worked so well last time. Sometimes, he’s even funny.

“Okay, but seriously, what do you want to do about Fridays?” Patrick says, focusing up. Pete too grows more serious.

“My car can’t leave the parking lot,” Pete says. “I don’t care what you do but I can’t leave.”

“Again, we could just change the day.”

“I’m not having that conversation with my dad,” says Pete. “Are you?”

And it’s not like Patrick wouldn’t if he _really_ have to _,_ but yeah, Pete’s right. He’s really rather not.

“So?”

Pete tilts his head like he’s puzzling it out. Eventually he sighs, blowing his bangs off of his forehead. “What if you just, like, showed up at the beginning? Let my dad see you coming in the door.”

“You really think he won’t notice?”

“You can still do Saturdays, right?” asks Pete. Patrick nods. “Then yeah, I don’t see why he would. It’s not like he ever stays for more than fifteen minutes. We’ll just ham it up on Saturdays or whatever. Make it seem like we’re really getting into it.”

Though he doesn’t say it, Patrick wouldn’t put it past the pastor to ‘check in’ without notice. It’s that sort of ambush that left them lurching when he asked to see Pete’s progression the first time. Still, he’s getting what he wants without even a real fight. After all, it’s not like the pastor has any _real_ power to punish him. If Pete’s okay with the possibility of getting caught, Patrick can’t play the chicken.

“Fine,” Patrick agrees. “See you Friday then.”

“Give my love to Joe,” grins Pete, blowing Patrick a big, wet kiss.

Patrick leaves, hiding his laughter, and flipping Pete the bird.

*

The pastor doesn’t notice. At least, if he does Patrick is too busy dealing with a sudden onset of nerves that Friday night to pay much attention.

Pete picks him up at the usual time, snarking because Patrick makes him idle in the driveway for several long minutes while he changes his shirt for the fifth time that night, losing time staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and trying to find anything redeemable enough to risk shoving his body up on a stage.

They still don’t talk much during their drives to the church, but the silence has lost its antagonism. Usually it’s Pete keep his moody distance, but today it’s solely Patrick who is caught up in his own head. After greeting the pastor and nodding at the parishioners stacking away the meeting chairs, Patrick follows Pete into the backroom and tries to restrain his fidgeting to just tugging on his jacket sleeves and pacing. He’d thrown on the jacket as a last ditch attempt at absorption. He’s already boiling under the extra layer.

“So,” Pete says, flopping down onto his usual spot on the sofa. “Guess I was right after all.”

Through some monument of effort, Patrick manages to heave his gaze off the floor. “What are you talking about?”

Pete’s sly mouth is curled up on the edges.“You look like you’re about to hurl, dude. Also, that’s the first shirt I’ve been you in that doesn’t look like rats have been chewing on it. Don’t try tell me you don’t have a date tonight.”

“Fuck off.” The response is automatic. “You want to nitpick my fashion? You?”

Pete looks down at the faded gray PE shirt so small it’s rides an inch off his hips. “Why am I not surprised you’ve got a problem with gym?”

Patrick snorts, because it’s better than getting mad. The noise irritates the caustic nausea growing in the back of his throat. He barely manages to swallow it down when he and Pete are forced to come out of the backroom. They put on a show of setting up at the piano. Pete plays up and down the white keys like it’s an actual scale, while Patrick spreads out the sheet music he printed out at the school library a few weeks back.

“Seven o’clock, Pete,” the pastor says, like he does every time just before he leaves them. Patrick doubts Pete actually needs the reminder. He’s out of the church like a shot as soon as their two hours are done.

As soon as the pastor leaves, Pete lifts his hands from the keys, cracking his knuckles in a series of garish pops. He turns to Patrick. “So?”

“So?”

“So are you gonna tell me where you’re going tonight or not?”

“Not,” says Patrick firmly. He steps away from the piano, too nervous to just stand there with Pete’s eyes on him. He checks the clock hanging on the wall. Andy’s meant to pick him up at quarter after five. Patrick wants to be out on the curb waiting before he gets here.

He picks the sheet music back up and shoves it back into this backpack. His hands are damp so he rubs them against his jeans. A gurgle ruminates from his stomach as his body continues its quest to break him down with nerves.

“Wait, seriously? I’m covering for you and you’re not even gonna let me in on the secret.”

“It’s not a secret,” Patrick says, “it’s just none of your business.”

Pete looks a little pissy at Patrick’s shortness, but Patrick doesn’t have it in him to walk on eggshells around Pete’s emotional minefield. He’s got his own problems to worry about.

“See you,” he mumbles, picking up his backpack. Pete flicks two fingers at him and doesn’t look up from the piano keys.

When Patrick walks outside the season has turned just far enough into autumn now that the shadows stretch long even at five o’clock. His trek kicks up red dirt onto his jeans from the unpaved lot. He pats himself down as he reaches the sidewalk, too worked up to sit on the curb. When Andy’s station wagon finally turns the corner, Joe’s shaggy-dog head sticks out the window like a beacon.

“Barn night. Barn night. Barn night,” Joe chants under his breath as Patrick climbs into the car. The gleam in Joe’s gaze is quite different from the half-baked boredom that usually plagues him. Patrick wishes he could share in the enthusiasm.

“Buckle up,” Andy adds, looking at Patrick through the rearview with a sedate smile. Patrick attempts a smile back. He has to wipe his palms on his pants again before he can manage the seatbelt, his fingers keep slipping on the plastic.

When he looks up again, he sees a smudge in the church window that might just be Pete before Andy peels away. Then they’re around the corner and Patrick can’t think of anything as he’s dragged firmly back into his expanding pit of despair. Joe and Andy talk the entire car ride out of the town and onto the highway, but Patrick barely registers the words that they’re exchanging. His thoughts are jumbling in a thousand formless shapes. He’s trying to remember the smattering of lyrics he’d thrown together for today, but the verses are tripping around in his skull, mushed by a blender at top speed. Why couldn’t they have just stuck to a cover? Why was _Patrick_ still the one who had to sing? It was embarrassing enough just show Joe and Andy his weak attempt at lyrics.

Less than fifteen minutes after he’s picked up, they pull off the highway and onto a one-lane road that twists through a small copse of trees. The car jumps as they hop over the railway tracks, then Andy is pulling up to a dirt lot outside of a giant, half-collapsed barn. Patrick honestly has to gape at it, because the ceiling is nearly completely gone and the entire thing is made of gray, weathered wood that leans noticeably to the left. It it weren’t for the lights on inside Patrick would have bet money on the thing being abandoned. Or condemned.

“Okay, listen up,” announces Andy, killing the ignition and swiveling around in the driver’s seat. “We’re here to audition tonight. Just because you’re here doesn’t mean you’re automatically in.”

“Great reminder that it’s just us on trial here,” Joe groans, but his eyes are still gleaming. He shakes his head. “Come on. Let’s just get this over with.”

He pops the door handle, toppling out into the dirt and nearly trotting to get his guitar from the back. Andy catches Patrick’s eye as they trudge after him, head tilting in question, but Patrick can’t do much more than wince back. He keeps his hands shoved firmly into his pockets, the brim of his hat pulled as low as he can get it without risking going blind and running into things.

Inside the barn doesn’t look much better than the outside of it. The giant hole in the roof is only more obvious as they come through the door. The jagged edges gape where broken planks have been eaten by weather and wear. The floor is gray dirt padded with hay and the only source of electricity seem to be several long extension wires nailed to the walls, from which yellow string lights have been daisy chained to circle the whole barn.

The only thing that marks the place as a gathering for music is the stage set up on the far wall. It’s protected from the elements by the last quarter of the remaining roof and is composed almost entirely of plywood and dubious construction. There’s a drum kit already up there, and two guys are lugging out amps and microphones as the three of them walk in.

“You’re early, Hurley,” one of them calls out, hopping off the stage and slouching over. He’s got a mop of dark hair falling all over his shoulders and heavy black rings around his eyes. This might have been intimidating, if not for the little smile full of tiny teeth he flashes at them. “I’m Gerard.”

“This is Joe and Patrick,” says Andy. “They’re the ones I was telling you about.”

“Nice. That’s Mikey up on stage,” says Gerard, jerking his head. He squints at them. Patrick wonders if his urge to run is written all over his face. Gerard certainly stares at him a beat longer than Joe. “You kids ready? Nervous?”

Patrick can’t do anything more than grimace. Andy just claps him and Joe on the shoulders and steers them towards the stage. “They’ll be fine. Need help setting up?”

Which is how Patrick winds up sweating through his jacket lugging speakers in from the back of the Way brothers’ van. Gerard and Mikey seem nice enough, but Patrick can’t look either of them in the face, much less join in the chatter.

It’s fully dusk by the time the stage is set. Bugs have swarmed in from the inside, smacking their fat bodies against the string lights. Patrick watches one moth beat itself repeatedly, falling off mere seconds after it lands just to fly back up and slam into the lights again. Patrick is not even pretending at nausea anymore. His head is full-on swimming.

All too soon he finds himself being yanked up on stage by the rest of his band and shoved in front of a microphone. There’s a crackle of Joe getting his guitar plugged in; a squeak as Andy sits down on his drum stool.

Patrick’s heavy, labored breathing fills the barn around them. He _sounds_ sick. And fat. And scared. He swallows loudly into the microphone.

As far as an audience goes, two shouldn’t be that bad. Patrick would maybe feel better about it if Mikey Way was not currently aiming a camcorder at his face. The red light pins Patrick down as powerful as a spotlight.

“It’s just for insurance,” Gerard explains, catching his gaze.

Blackmail. Patrick can’t seem to look away.

If Patrick could see through the camcorder’s lens, what would he see? Patrick can’t imagine what his face must be doing. He knows he’s red and dribbling. Can the recording pick up on the way his exhales crackle on the mic? He sounds like he’s wheezing. Like someone’s taken his lungs in a giant hand squeezed him like a chew toy.

Fuck Pete Wentz. No. Patrick _does not_ like gym class.

At least Pete isn’t _here_.

Somewhere behind him, Andy’s sticks crack against each other in three sharp lightning strikes. Joe’s guitar jumps in. Familiar chords reverberate around the room. The bass drum trembles through Patrick’s chest as they go. Three…two…one...

There’s a beat, then another one, counted out on Andy’s drums before Patrick realizes its time for him to sing. He could barely hear Joe finishing the intro chords over the seasick crash of his own breathing. He feels Joe’s urgent stare now, hot, stabbing right into the side of his neck.

Patrick lurches for the mic. He makes it—barely—and practically screams the first line.

Oh god. He watches Gerard Way flinch. Mikey’s eyes flick up from behind the camera.

Patrick backs away from the mic like that will save him. His mouth is open and words are tumbling out of it, but he has no idea if he’s saying the right thing, much less hitting the right notes.

Strike that. He _knows_ he’s not hitting the right notes. There’s nothing right about what he’s doing. He _knew_ that. He’s always _known_ that. This is nothing like singing in his room.

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He’s never even used a microphone before. Why is the mic so tall anyway? He should have adjusted it. Why didn’t he adjust it? He’s got to look like an idiot craning his neck, arms flapping uselessly by his sides like a chicken choking on rain, all recorded for posterity’s sake under the camcorder’s red stare. 

Patrick’s neck is tight. It’s like he can’t breathe quite right. He can feel a tightness in his throat, a strain like he’s been laughing too hard but there’s nothing funny about this. This is a car crash. He closes his eyes and waits for the impact, hoping no one can see under his hat. He doesn’t open them again.

And then it’s over. Patrick’s supposed to hold the last note as the guitar and drums fade out, but it cuts off as he runs out of air, turning sour and sharp before breaking. Instead, the song ends with his terrible, terrified gasp into the microphone.

Patrick drops his head the second it’s done. He takes several tiny steps backward. As far away from the mic as he can go.

There’s no applauses. Of course there’s no applause. Patrick can’t open his eyes to see what the others’ faces look like though.

The silence isn’t just in Patrick’s head either. There’s a definite passing of several seconds after the Patrick’s last strangled note where no one speaks. Then, finally—

“Got it.”

“You got the whole thing?”

“Yeah. I’ll give it to Toro tonight to get copied. We’re good.”

That’s…not what Patrick was expecting. It doesn’t _sound_ like people yelling at him. Or booing him off the stage. Patrick cautiously opens his eyes.

Gerard and Mikey are huddled together around the camcorder. The red light is off. There’s squeal as Andy gets up from behind the drum kit and ambles down towards them. From Patrick’s left, Joe asks incredulously, “That’s it?”

Gerard waves a hand. “Yeah. Come on down guys. That’s all we needed.”

“We’re in?”

“To come to the party tonight? Sure. No offense, but you’re not really ready for the stage yet. It’s not a big deal. You’ve only been together for what? A week. You can try again if you want to get in on that. But you can come back tonight if you want to. Or just hang out. We won’t get started for a few more hours though.”

Gerard is trying to be nice to them, is the thing. Patrick can’t take it.

He walks off the stage. He shoves his hands into his stupid jacket’s pockets and marches until he’s out the barn doors and well away from the entrance. There are crickets outside that go silent at his approach. He’s full of something hot and dizzy. Humiliated.

As if on cue, Joe comes out to follow him.

“Patrick? Hey, Patrick. Come on. Where’s the fire, man?”

Patrick turns away so Joe won’t see the embarrassing way Patrick’s eyes have watered up or how red his face must be. He hears the crunch of the dirt at Joe walks nearer. Patrick’s shoulders bunch around his ears.

“Patrick? You good?”

Patrick doesn’t answer.

“Come on. It wasn’t _that_ bad.”

Except that it was. Patrick has ears. He knows what terrible music sounds like and it isn’t Joe’s guitar or Andy’s drums that’s rattling in his ears now, shrill and slurred and appalling.

Joe steps closer. “At least come back inside. You heard Gerard. They’re letting us in. At least we get to go to the party tonight.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Come on, Patrick. Don’t be like that. It was fine. Okay? It was just nerves.”

“I just don’t want to, okay?” Patrick snaps, turning around just in time to watch Joe draw back. Patrick wants to apologize. He doesn’t want to be this guy. But the words that come out of his mouth next are hurt, defensive. “I told you I didn’t want to sing. I fucking said I didn’t want to.”

“Jesus, Patrick,” sighs Joe. “You’re making this into a big deal. It was just stage fright. The guys in there get that.”

“You don’t know that! Fuck, Joe. I fucking told you.”

Joe crosses his arms as Patrick yells, the gleam fading from his eyes. “Yeah, well, the band needs a singer. What? Are you just going to quit now? One bad song and that’s it? You give up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fuck. Are you kidding me? That was supposed to be rhetorical.”

“Okay, well, I don’t know!” Patrick repeats, except he’s back to shouting. Joe pulls even further back. Patrick wants to say he looks angry. Patrick can deal with angry. But Joe just stares at him, placid as paint.

“You can be a real dick sometimes, you know that?” Joe finally says.

“I just—I’m not saying I’m quitting the band,” Patrick says quickly, nervous with the way Joe is staring at him. “Come on, Joe. I just can’t go in there right now. Okay. I need to think.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Joe uncrosses his arms, hooded eyes blank when he looks at Patrick. He shrugs. “You think about it, man. Take all the time you want. I’m going back inside.”

“Joe,” says Patrick, strangled. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Joe walks away, not stopping to look back. “Yeah. Sure. Good luck figuring it out.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I mean, you really think people in fan fiction get to keep perfectly healthy relationships forever? Without even a hint of conflict? I think not. 
> 
> I welcome the yelling.


End file.
